Help, Please

I've never liked asking for help.

More than anything, asking for help is admitting deficiency or need. At times it requires a sheepish shrug of the shoulders, a nodding "I know I should know how to do this but I don't" look on your face, a hint of pleading without clear desperation as you ask someone to sacrifice their time or resources to meet needs that are not their own. It is a pride-swallowing admission that "you know something I don't know" or "I don't have it all figured out like I want you to believe I do." Whether it's help moving, help fixing, help learning, or help providing, the request puts you in a clear position of inferiority.

There are people who take pride in never having to ask for help. They may want help. Help may make their situation easier. But they will not ask, because, just to be clear, they do not need it. I have never had the skills or resources to be one of those people. Now I don't even want to be.

This week I came to realize more fully why asking for help is one of the best requests you can make. At the beginning of the week I spent two days on RAGBRAI, a major bike ride across the state of Iowa. I love the ride and have been thrilled to have ridden parts of it over the past four years with a good friend of mine, but it can be an absolute logistical nightmare. First, my friend and I needed transportation to the western edge of the state. We also needed places to stay in two different locations. Then we needed someone to come pick us up in the middle of nowhere. Also, I needed someone to watch my kids and my dog. All this for the selfish cause of two days on a bike with a good friend consuming gluttonous amounts of roadside calories.

The favor requests began. And they were all met. My wife agreed to give up much of her weekend to drive us to the start. Her sister offered us supper and a place to sleep on Saturday night. My sister volunteered to watch both my kids and our 5-month old lab. An old friend from high school supplied food and lodging on the second night. Strangers we've never met before transported our bags from one town to another. My friend's parents picked us up after two days. Obviously we were blessed, blessed beyond belief, helped in every way to meet every need (or want) that we requested. We asked for help. We were provided for. But it was more than that.

Asking for help felt like I was making a huge burden of myself. And I probably was. But in reality, I see that what asking for help did was provide me the opportunity to build relationships, or strengthen them, and to share time and stories and laughs. Every person who agreed to help provided that. I would not have spent two hours with my sister and her husband on Saturday if we had not asked for help. Similarly, I wouldn't have had a couple of road hours with my wife, or a great meal and good stories with my sister-in-law and her family, or a stroll down the Iowa Walk of Fame on the sidewalks of Shenendoah, Iowa with an old friend and her husband. They were all so eager to offer help, and what I see now is that they were eager to offer themselves.

Looking back, I know that every time I've asked a friend to help me figure out a home improvement project, or to borrow a tool, or to water my garden, it's given us more time together. When I ask my parents, or my in-laws for help, we become closer. And when I admit to my wife what I won't admit to anyone else, that I just can't do it all, that I need her, need emotional support, need energy, need prayers, need someone to help me limp across whatever finish line there may be, need her, that it is then that we are the strongest. I've built and grown many relationships on the premise of needing someone's help. I needed their help, but I mostly needed them in my life.

John Steinbeck said that, "people are more inclined to help each other in hard times. Good times don't bring out the best in people." In good times, we isolate. Pride swells. We are not vulnerable, we do not reach out, and we do not seek the connections that are the oxygen of living well. No matter how hard asking for help seems, we are always better, in many more ways than we sought, after having done so.

The best of times, it seems, is when we most need others.