I have this memory from when I was just a little girl. I believe it was a Sunday morning, and I was getting dressed and ready for church. There I was, sitting on the edge of my bed, attempting to put my stockings on. When I say stockings, I mean those good ol’ pure white, nylon-like tights that matched every little girl’s Sunday School dress perfectly in the 90’s.
As a child, those things were a nightmare to get on. They were so tight, and managing to pull them all the way up your legs was like having a wrestling match with yourself. On this particular Sunday morning, I made an attempt at the trick I had seen my mother do. I bunched up one leg of my stockings from the toe to the top and slipped my foot right in there. Then I tried to pull the stocking the rest of the way up my leg.
But instead of it sliding on with the ease that it did when my mother did it, I found myself in yet another wrestling match. The stocking stayed bunched and got caught on my leg, and my little hands couldn’t get it to slide up. So I tried pulling my foot out and trying again. When I was met with the same result, the furious tugging began. Then the kicking. Then the ridiculous combination of both. And finally, I let go — my stockings only partially up my little legs — and sat on the edge of my bed, crying in frustration.
Moments later, my mother comes into the room asking me what’s wrong. And I tell her, with tears falling down my cheeks and anger in my voice, “I can’t get it. I can’t get it to work.” Then she bends down in front of me and tells me, “You don’t need to get so frustrated and upset, Brianna. Just ask for help.” And she proceeds to — with her amazing motherly expertise — help me get my stockings on, and we go to church.
It’s a simple memory. But for whatever reason, it’s one that I haven’t forgotten. And I realize now that it’s one of my earliest recollections of trying to do something myself and getting completely beside-myself upset when I just can’t.
While I have mastered the art of putting stockings/tights on over the years (although quite frankly, my best solution has just been to not wear them at all), that wasn’t the last time that I came across something that I wanted to be able to do myself, but just couldn’t. And it wasn’t the last time I let it frustrate me to tears.
I’ve encountered many circumstances like that. And these circumstances are really one of my greatest weaknesses. Reason being that one of the hardest things for me to do is to ask for help. I’m one of those people who just wants to figure it out on my own — I don’t want to look like I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to admit that I can’t do it on my own.
I was like this in school, too. If you had asked any one of my teachers how often I asked for help, they’d probably all say something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t know that I can recall her ever asking.” Because I didn’t. I would have rather gone into a test not totally confident in knowing how to answer a particular question than to have asked the teacher for help understanding prior to the test.
It was a matter of pride to me. I didn’t want help because I didn’t want people to think that I needed it. I wanted people to think that I knew what I was doing. And honestly, I really shouldn’t be using the past tense here. I still very much struggle with this. I’m still the last person to ask someone for help.
And I think God has decided that it’s time I learned a thing or two about this. Especially when it comes to asking Him.
Back in June of 2016, I wrote a post called When I’m Not Enough. In this post I talk about a turning point in my faith-walk with Christ where I realized that on my own I am not good enough — but that through my relationship with and salvation in Christ, He has made me enough in Him. Well, call this post today the “Part 2” of that lesson.
The first step is knowing that I’m not enough without Christ and that only through Him can I be who I’m meant to be and do what I’m meant to do. The next step is to — in the southern twang-y words of the wonderful Beth Moore — “Do the thang.”
I need to stop being so afraid of admitting to God that I need His help. I know that sounds so trivial — I mean, I know that I need His help. I’ve never denied that. But have I actually lived like I know that? How many times have I tried to take a struggle I have or a circumstance I’ve encountered into my own hands and say to myself, “I can figure this out. I can do this. I’ve got this. This is what God would want me to do,” without actually handing it over to God and consulting Him first for help?
Sure, I might ask Him for help when I pray. But it usually sounds something like this — “This is the best solution I’ve come up with. I’m gonna do this, God. Make it go right for me.”
I’ve realized that maybe it should sound a little more like what King Jehoshaphat prayed to God when an army was descending on Judah — “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you” (2 Chron. 20:12).
And you know what happened? God told him exactly what to do. And if you read the story of what happened, I don’t think what God told Jehoshaphat and the army of Judah to do was the first idea that Jehoshaphat would have come up with when facing an army that wants to kill him and his people. But he did it (because he asked), and God defeated their enemies for them.
Maybe it’s time I start admitting that sometimes (or a lot of times) I really don’t know what in the world I should do in a situation or problem and that I need God’s help to figure it out. That maybe I could avoid the kicking and crying when what I do doesn’t work. That no matter how many solutions I come up with for a problem, if I don’t include God in them, I’ll never really solve it.
Maybe it’s time I stop trying to will myself to overcome every insecurity I have. Maybe it’s time I realize that “talking myself out of them” won’t quite do it. Maybe it’s time I start actually laying those things, completely bare and broken, before God and humbly admit to Him, “I can’t do it. I can’t make it work. Please help me. Please show me what to do.”
When work gets overwhelming. When you’re “still single.” When you go back to that sin again. When you struggle to separate introvert from lonely. When you just don’t understand what your “calling” is in life. When you just don’t know where the right place to stand on an issue is.
Maybe it’s time to stop concocting solutions on my own that “just might work this time” and start consulting the God of the Universe — the God who knows all things and who knows every part of me.
Because something tells me that this isn’t the first time He’s told me, “You don’t need to get so upset and frustrated, Brianna. Just ask for help.”
And it certainly won’t be the last. Complete surrender is not something that comes naturally to us. But complete surrender to God is the one thing that will set us free from ourselves.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. – Phillippians 4:6
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. – Psalm 121:2
And the Kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God had given him rest on every side. -2 Chronicles 20:30
Brianna Lee Kauffman 