I have always been fine with helping other people. I have no idea why but I have become so accustomed to treating the needs of almost anyone above my own needs that I am willing to go out of my way to help complete strangers. When someone offers me help me however, my first reaction is to question why it is that person would do that which usually just leads to me deciding I do not need/deserve that person’s help or to believe that that person has other motives. After this, I just move into being irrational and confrontational: definitely not the best way to react to someone trying to be helpful.
About a month ago, I screwed up worse than I have in a long time and that is when I started giving this a lot of though. In the moment, my train of thought was “why should I let this person go out of her way to do a favor for me, I am undeserving of this favor and her comfort is more important”. That was all very well for that moment but when she went out of her way to be helpful to me, my immediate reaction was to just remain stubborn, not to take the logical route and just be gracious and accept the help. I think I severely damaged my friendship with this person by screwing up there (okay, probably through other things I do not yet realize as well) and I want to make sure I do not wrock any other relationships in the future the same way.
As was pointed out to me a week later, learning how to accept help is just as important as helping other people. To accept help is to let other people help me and let them experience what it is that I want for myself. I accept that helping other people is the right thing to do but sometimes I do it in a selfish way, doing what makes me feel best and ignoring what other people really think would be best. It is hard for me to realize what other people are thinking, to realize what they want, but that is something I am going to try to work towards. At the very least, I am going to make sure I do what is right in situations that are obvious afterwards and try to avoid being stubborn and letting that blind me in the moment.
Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you?
Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.
–Richard Gillard