Asking for Help

I suppose asking for help doesn’t come easily for anyone. Surely that must true. We all must think of ourselves as able to find our way on our own, helping others . . . not the ones needing help.

Need seems to place us lower than we might want to be. It takes us back to that dependency where we were, reaching up with a hand, reaching for someone stronger, smarter, more powerful, more adept than we are.

That’s the thought, the learning that I’m unraveling now. It doesn’t have to feel that way.

Reaching out for help doesn’t mean reaching up for strength.

Am I strong enough in my sense of self to believe that?
Can I ask for help and feel I’m not becoming dependent?

Of course I can. I can stand by your side and lean on you, knowing you’ll lean on me when you feel the same need.

You and I do that without thinking.

Asking for help is faith and trust. It’s something to live up to both ways. It makes us stronger, gentler, gives us grace.

I am learning how to become a human being. It takes help.

All I had to do was ask.

−me strauss Letting me be

Believing Instead of Wishing

I was in an elevator in the UK, on my way to a meeting. A young lady who was chatting with me as we went to the conference room said, “You travel internationally. Oh that must be so glamorous.”

I smiled to myself, thinking I was her once. How do I tell her that it’s not without taking something from her?

Sometimes the words come out the way they should.

“Glamour is only glamour from far away. Up close it looks like life with all its warts. Even movie stars have bad days.”

She was a smart one, that young lady. She stopped and gave a thought. Then I saw her eyes smiling widely. “Yes, and I suppose that it’s ok for it to be that way. We look at them and they look at us – just as the king wishes he could be a person. I guess we need to know which one we want. It’s decisions that count not wishes.”

She was only twenty-five. I was older by a lot. By the time the elevator stopped she had become quite glamorous to me.

Glamour is about belief.

If I believe my dream, my wishes will become decisions.

−me strauss Letting me be

Whole Again for the First Time

Her name was Meadow, though she’d never seen one. She dreamed of one day finding a meadow, having a picnic, and feeling at home there. Until then life was about food, clothing, and shelter, and a green balloon.

Meadows don’t have boundaries or edges. They’re wide open to the sky above and flat to the ground. They don’t seek company. They wait for folks to discover them and their wildflowers. Some people do. Some people run over them without even noticing the meadow they are trampling. The name was well-chosen for this little girl.

The world couldn’t see that then. Neither could Meadow. Meadow thought she was like the green balloon.

Because she thought it, it was true.

Meadow didn't tell anyone, but she kept her problems in that green balloon. She also tucked in the bad feelings that problems bring with them. She knew that way the bad things always were contained. She thought that meant she’d be safe and never be hurt. She didn’t know that other feelings were trapped in there too − good feelings − feelings about believing, knowing, trusting, and . . . just being, the right to be boring.

So the balloon became part of her. Meadow tied it to her wrist the way children do. She started to think of herself as the girl with the green balloon. The world thought it curious that she never let go of her balloon, not ever.

Meadow held onto that balloon even when it meant letting go of living life. When she couldn’t get the balloon through a door, she wasn’t invited to the party. She couldn’t go lots of places or do lots of things because of the balloon and what was inside it. When the balloon got in the way, she could not let go of it. So the world let go of her.

Meadow, the girl with the green balloon, felt alone left behind.

Then someone asked her, “What do you keep that silly balloon for?”

She told him.

“Why would you do that? Those problems are over. You're grown now, if they happen again, you'd know what to do. Imagine if you had your feelings inside you.”

All Meadow had to do was untie the string and let the balloon go.

It seems so simple.

It was. I did it.

−me strauss Letting me be