Day 3348 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 121:1 NIV

Perhaps one of the few things that costs nothing but seems as if it asks everything of us to ask for as our pride cannot bear the brunt of our being so self-belittled as to our admitting we need help.

It’s another of those entirely strange misunderstandings that have all become all but foundational to humanity’s failings. That needing help is evidence of our not being enough or knowing enough is obvious, wouldn’t need the assistance if we could manage alone. But to do as we always seem to and assume that it’s even beyond that to the seeming as if we’re not enough, not worth enough, not worth anything simply for the fact that we need help is entirely counterproductive in that it keeps us stuck in a place we don’t want to be, just because we don’t want to seem insufficient.

But friends, we are.

Insufficiency is something that defines us all in many ways. Now we may try to paint on a happy face and pretend away all of life’s problems, but that doesn’t make them really dissipate, does it? We’ve all been known to lie and make believe that we’re doing just fine, nothing but sunshine and happiness our way, but if we know that’s not usually the case then how can others ever believe it? All of us have perfected these pretenses performed for the applause of some audience that isn’t even looking!

Indeed, we all live as if we’re supposed to show the world what strength and courage and resiliency really are, that we’re the most perfect embodiment of ability in regard to whatever storm or struggle we might face. Truth be told we even go so very far as to deny said struggles even exist and dare those storms to pretend to blow across our picture-perfect sunsets and selfishness. No, we deny to the bitter end of ourselves that we aren’t able, aren’t meant to be.

Because we’ve been told that we are meant to be.

That we’re each supposed to be or be on the way to becoming these impenetrable towers of the most tempestuous ability able to overcome everything from the pouring rain to the darkness of the dreams we deny. Yes, we’re supposed to be valorous and victorious, never once allowed to stumble, to struggle, to shift inside these stances we take as if the outcome all depends on us pretending that the outcome is determined by us and our ability to wield ideals into submission.

Yet beyond the vanity of it all, here we are. Each of us sitting inside a life that makes sense far less than we let on. Every day we awake to a whole heap of hopelessness we neither planned for nor want to deal with. And at the end of each day we climb back into another fleeting chance to hide from the hassle and hardships under the cloak of midnight and the stars hopefully not shining too brightly so as to keep luminescent our latest letdowns.

That’s become a rather large swath of life, hasn’t it? Being let down. Letting ourselves down. It has for me, almost so much so that I dare sneak into a new day without some fear of all the failures just waiting for me to find them along this road that so often seems to leave me being dragged behind life rather than taking it by the reins and reigning it into the rainless redemption I crave to save myself from being proven what the past has proven I’ve been all these years.

Insufficient.

Indeed, I look back upon the life left smoldering behind me and see only all the moments in which I needed help but couldn’t want it. I see the mistakes made at the insistence of some sort of arrogance that just refuses to let me live in peace, always egomaniacally trading that peace for pieces of putty plastered on walls and penned upon paper that I assumed valuable enough to give my wasted life some worth. Helping myself to all that kept me from seeing I couldn’t ever help myself.

Yes, it seems to me that what I’ve made of this life lived without the courage to ask for help has only left me down here in this world of distractions just drifting, dying, decaying. Always aware of the these many issues in my life, my heart, my time, just never once interested in addressing them for the sheer sake of having to admit them first. No, seems as though there’s always been that same confusion, this same realization that something has to change.

Turns out that something is me.

Because truth be told, I’m the one screwing this up. I’m the one picking all these problems I then have to pretend aren’t more alive and breathing than I am most days. I’m the one fixing all these focuses upon all the wrong devotions, decisions so devoid of direction that I don’t know where up is some days. Yes, I’m the only one left holding the blame from inside these flames I’ve found only reason to stoke for hope that they might finally burn through the disbelief I’ve become.

For that is perhaps one of the darkest sides of our never asking for help. Maybe we do it, or rather don’t do it because we doubt. Doubt that anyone can help. Doubt that we’ll get the kind of help we want. Doubt that the help we do get will be enough to overcome our underwhelming ability to both ask for and then appreciate the assistance our arrogance always says we could have done without.

But that’s just it, what are we doing without in this life lived as if we can do without help? What are we actually managing to accomplish on our own, and what does that have us missing? What glory is there in this most gory story we’re stealing from the Author of life? What prize are we set to win from down here within this idea that says we can be the ones who manage to make it to only whatever we can happen to crawl toward?

Yes, what truly awaits us just beyond the finish line of living only always behind our best?

My best is rust. It’s dust and daydreams demanding a chance to show nothing more than I’ve ever been capable of being, seeing, achieving. My best intentions have designed inventions insisting that I can craft or create something inside of me that allows me to lean on me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. All any of us have ever wanted. We want to be the ones who do it alone so that we never need share any glory, any applause, any meaning or every crown we pretend we’ve won in this life in which we’re racing only against time.

That’s kind of what we talked about yesterday. That time’s running out, and yet that still we live as if we’ve all the time in the world to try and take whatever we want from life as we can only assume we know it. But what do we know of life? What can we know of life if, after all, all we’ve ever sought was all that allowed us to soothe the incessant selfishness that says we need to do it alone?

What can a life achieve if all it’s meant to be is just the sum of someone’s inabilities to believe beyond their best ability?

I awoke to that contemptuous consideration this morning. A sudden shock seen in eyes realizing for once that I know nothing of life. For I’ve lived all these years looking to the world around me, these ideas inside me, the suggestions of close companions as to who I should be, what I should do, where I should go. And yet here I am, much the same as I’ve always been, just sort of now drowning in the curiosity as to where these ideas for change keep coming from.

Not from me. We’re a people entirely prone to permeate our present. Just sort of sink roots into these pools of ourselves poured out wherever we’ve managed to reach and tell ourselves that it’s enough. But yet there’s always this lingering wonder as to whether there might be more beyond these barricades of our belittlement that we never build the courage to see, let alone see beyond. Always an intrigue as to what might be found just outside of ourselves and this vain victory we’ve been claiming we’ve won.

No, I look around at all the prizes I’ve had and held inside this life lived without the courage to ask for the help I needed to find something not at all as worthless as these rags and riches I’ve wasted on watching hope always run right past this pitiable outpost called life that I’ve commandeered and pretended to command. Miserable thing too, watching hope remain alive while seeing dreams slowly die. Quite the cumbersome confusion to be sure!

And yet we settle for it, every single day sometimes. We know better is available. Well aware that hope is truly alive and thriving somewhere out there. Yes, we’re all able to see beyond what we’ve built and become, just that we know it would take help for us to reach that better, and well, again, our pride just can’t abide by that.

But the question comes in just how long are we willing to wonder? How long are we willing to waste away? How many more days we are ready to lose into this life we’ve stopped living several years back? How much longer will we do as our ego insists and deny the help we need?

Why do we deny the help we so clearly need? Is it because of this world that offers us quicker help that we can see? Streets lined with lights and lies leading us toward more of what we’ve always been, always known? Is it because we’re afraid to fail despite the past saying we’re actually pretty good at surviving it? Are we truly ashamed to be ashamed of our inabilities, allowing them then to define for us what our lives are able to be or become? Yes, are we seriously willing to let our struggles steal our story?

Seems so. Otherwise we’d tell our pride to take a hike so that we can finally walk out of this rock bottom we’ve known for years too long.

See, that’s the help we need. It’s the courage to look around and let our eyes see something other than whatever nonsense we’ve managed to convince ourselves is supposed to be good enough. It’s the audacity to steal into this new day adamant that we find something to struggle with. What? Find something to struggle with? Ask for hardship? Seek failure? Push ourselves to our breaking point, insisting that we find what’s always been beyond it?

YES!!!

Because the fact is that until we break our doubt and disbeliefs as designed inside this fear of asking for help, we’ll always be only whatever we’ve already become. And while this world does indeed say that such is, apparently, an entirely acceptable outcome for a life, how can it be? How can settling for what we’ve already seen and always messed up truly amount to a life we can pretend was lived well? How can a few years of mistakes and misunderstandings leave us standing when the ground we’ve built ourselves upon falls out from under us?

It can’t.

Because these castles made of sand that keep us feeling safe from failing and falling sort are just dust waiting for the wind pick up or the rain to fall down. And while such is exactly what we’ve so clearly set out to seek for ourselves, cardboard kingdoms complete with cartoon crowns fit for kings and queens of nothing, that is exactly what we’ll have when the wind does start to blow and those clouds form overhead. Nothing. We will have nothing left of this life we’ve lived without wanting the help we need to live for more than this life.

And while that is indeed a truly terrifying thought to consider, letting go of this life we’ve come to convince ourselves makes sense for the sake of not feeling ashamed of our staying put here at this most mundial and mundane outcome we’ve become in exchange for the chance to change everything into a way we’ve never walked toward a hope we cannot catch held inside a home we cannot see built by a Savior who at times feels more distant than Pluto, what other choice do we have?

Stay put? Ride it out? Never know? Never hope? Never heal?

No, settle for that sadness if you want, not me. Had enough of such sorrow as my always assuming I didn’t need help only to open my eyes to another day in which I already agree to not change anything, not try anything, not repent from anything and head back home. I’m tired of trying to convince myself that this life is home, that this world is enough, that if I just find enough little trinkets and triumphs that my life will be happy and have meaning. It won’t.

It can’t.

Life cannot mean anything if we live it only according to our abilities, stuck always inside our insufficiency. Because God created us for much more than we’ve built and become. And though it asks a humility we do not have, He will help. He will help us find that humility and the courage it becomes. He will guide us toward the best that He built for us, and He will provide every step of the way for our every need, just as He’s always done. Yes, God will always be the helpful Healer and most encouraging hope that He’s always been.

We just need help to see it. So let us take today and start looking to Him again. Let us ask Him to help us lose what we cannot keep so that we might gain what we cannot find as He teaches us to become what we’ve never had the ability to be by ourselves. Because life is undeniably more beautiful when we’re not the ones trying to pretend we can live alone.

So look beyond yourself, because that’s the only way that we can life beyond ourselves. And while it is scary because we don’t see how it can possibly work that way, truth is that it’s not really working our way either. No, we need help if we’re ever to find the hope that calls us toward something we’ve never known before. He is that help, we just have to be the ones who get our pride out of the way and let Him take the lead toward all we’ve never known before.

And while that may be scary sometimes, can we not see the excitement in it too?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold