Monday, May 25, 2009

We Have Not Because We Ask Not


Why did I wait until a few days before the Marathon to ask for prayer? When I finally sent an E-mail out to folks called, “I’ll pray for you, you pray for me” with a list of prayer requests for the Marathon, the response was overwhelming and overwhelmingly positive! (By the way, one prayer request I gave was that people would pray that the Lord would hide the sun behind the clouds most of the day so that we would have cool weather…and OH MY GOD DID HE DO JUST THAT!!!! We started at 7:25am and the sun did not even make an 'appearance' until around 12:30pm AND EVEN THEN, the Lord wouldn’t allow it to just be 'all out' and make us uncomfortable. The clouds kept covering the sun up as if the sun and the clouds were playing peek-a-boo, AND there was still a cool breeze the entire day!!! LOOK AT GOD!!!!)

But what took me so long to ask for help? Women, who lied to us and told us that we are suppose to have everything together all of the TIME and if we don’t, then we ought to just figure it out because every other woman does have it all together so why shouldn’t we? Who told us that lie? In that E-mail that I sent, my asking people to send me an encouraging word between Noon and 2pm of the Marathon, when I knew it would be the hardest, WAS ONE OF THE BEST IDEAS THE LORD EVER GAVE ME!!! Those encouraging text messages were SO VERY helpful!!! And some people didn’t wait until Noon so I was actually receiving the messages for most of the event!! THANK YOU! It turned out that those text messages were just as much the fuel and energy that I needed as were the energy chews that I chewed throughout the day.

Guess what? You aren’t the only mother who took fast food to her child for lunch because you still needed to go grocery shopping. You aren’t the only mother whose child wasn’t dressed up for picture day because you didn’t even know it was picture day. You are not the only woman that still serves leftovers! Your children are not the only children who have a T.V. dinner every once in a while. You aren’t the only woman who has elderly parents to care for and you are struggling. You aren’t the only wife who could really use a date night with her husband. You aren’t the only woman who needs to learn how to say ‘No’ the next time the folks at church or her child’s school, ask her to volunteer to do something. You are not the only woman who just can't seem to find the right nine-to-five for her.

As we choose to live healthy, let’s choose to ask for help when we need it. We all need help from time to time. And here’s an idea, since we know our girlfriends are usually reluctant to ask for help, just like we are, then let’s start asking more often if there is anything we can do to help. Especially, if we’ve ‘been there done that’ and we have an idea of what the person is not telling us when we say, “How are you doing?” and they say, “Fine”. Also, since this is a two-way street, when someone asks us if we need help, let’s not be too proud to say, ‘Yes….as a matter of fact, I really could use some help.’

Yes, these bodies are our temples, but sometimes if we have some help, we can do a lot better job of taking care of them.

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