(I Need Help).

I've never wanted to be a bother. I don't like asking for help. I'd rather figure things out by myself, struggle on my own, with no one around to watch if I fail. I don't want to be asked questions to which I have no answers. I don't want others to worry; I don't want others to know my weakness.

Following hard after the American dream, we have painted our individualism as a virtue, though from the very beginning God declared, It is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). While He fashioned us into many parts, we were formed to work together (Ephesians 4:16). Our personalized faith has cost us twofold: we not only harm our own spirits as we cut ourselves off from the source of encouragement and wisdom and love found in our brothers and sisters, but we also maim the Body of Christ when we amputate ourselves from the Church, which was designed to function with all its parts.

This is what God is teaching me, and (by His grace--always, by His grace) I am trying to be better.

Last week, I felt the rip-current of the overwhelming tugging my heart out into the deep--tangled blossoms of stress and anxiety curling around my overexerted heart. I didn't have the strength to fight it. Not on my own.

So I texted a friend and asked for prayer. She immediately responded in the affirmative, and as I was leaving my room to do some chores around the house, I caught sight of my iPod on the bookshelf. Jamming the headphones in my ears, I began to listen to my worship playlist as I swept the hallway. In less than a minute, God hit me with such a large dose of joy, I was singing and dancing around the house for hours afterward--even scrubbing grime from the toilet couldn't dampen my mood.

I knew that strength was not from me. It was from a prayer that I didn't even have the power to pray when I needed it. It came from the heart of Christ, coursing down the veins of His Body and into my muscles. It came because I asked for help, and because my sister was listening and answered me, and because this is the way our Father created His family to function. Not with pride and whitewashed faces. But in honesty. In realness. In love.