As someone who has struggled with the intimacy that comes from needing others, I get what is going on with a good friend of mine who is dealing with cancer. But, as I write in my latest column for OSV News, sometimes you just have to buck it up and let yourself need others — to let yourself be consoled:
My friend has faced the challenges of aging with grace and humor, but the whole “cancer-diabetes-wait-my-heart-is-broken-now?” trifecta did her in. For the first time since childhood, Ruby felt utterly unmoored from her own strengths.“You need to let yourself lean on your family and friends, a little,” I advised her. “It’s okay to say, ‘I need a hug, I need someone to fuss on me a little bit.’ Let people help!”
Uncomfortable with need and dubious about the whole endeavor, Ruby eventually hinted to her family that she was scared. “So much for your good advice,” she reported back, fuming. “They just said stuff like, ‘you have to take it a day at a time!’ I’m over here, terrified, and they’re no help at all!”
Sadly, people mostly don’t know what to say in such circumstances, particularly if they’ve never been asked for support. Ruby’s sudden need for the intimacy of consolation threw them off, a bit. Unsure about saying, “We’re scared too,” they fell back on “one day at a time,” which my friend — once she’d calmed down — recognized was sound advice. Cancer is scary. Sometimes you can only deal with it an hour (or even five minutes) at a time.
“You should forgive them for having no idea how to comfort you,” I told her, “because you’ve never needed them to before. This is new territory for everyone. Even if they’re not getting the words right, believe that they want the best for you and are praying for you.”
“And I hate myself for crying uncontrollably,” she wailed. “I really do.”
How often have we heard “strong” women say this — as if tears were a detestable fault or a sin against the perceived self? How many of us are walking around with broken hearts because we won’t permit ourselves the medicine of weeping and fully feeling the things we’ve determinedly repressed because we want that illusion of strength?
You can read the whole thing, here.
The Eagles advised, “you’d better let somebody love you…”
Scripture brings it forward, too:
do not fear, for I am with you,
do not be afraid, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. (Is. 41:10)
I’m beginning to understand the song line: “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”
We’re told to love others as we love ourselves. But sometimes the only way for us to grow in love — or to learn more about love — is to just LET ourselves be loved.
It can be difficult, especially because being loved makes us vulnerable. And because intimacy is sometimes scary.
All things are difficult before they are easy. But if we want to get to a point in our lives where love is not a struggle, but something easy, then… for some of us that might start with the difficult thing — letting ourselves be loved. A little paradoxical but doing so might make love feel safer, in the end.
Let’s pray for my friend, Ruby, and for everyone dealing with cancers and chronic illnesses.
Image via Pixabay, public domain.
