When You Don’t Get the Help You Desperately Need: for iBelieve

I wanted my first days of motherhood to affirm my faith in humanity. Instead, I found myself alienated and alone.

Like many of us, I’m usually reluctant to ask for help, so before birth, I’d made a solemn promise to myself and God that I would ask for assistance, no matter how hard it was.

I assumed my reluctance was the problem, not the people I might depend on.

But just hours after my baby was born, weakened from a near-hemorrhage during my home birth, I reached out to someone close to me I thought I could depend on. I asked for practical, limited help. They turned me down so nonchalantly it felt brutal.

The support I’d struggled to reach for crumbled under my hand.

Honestly, it took me years to recover from the shock. I could not tell whether I’d been foolish to ask for help at all, whether I’d asked too much, or whether something more complicated had happened.

It’s easy to sing about ‘getting by with a little help from our friends’. But asking for help from other people is a vulnerable proposition. What do we do when our desperate requests fall on deaf ears?

There are no easy answers. But in the years since my daughter’s birth, I’ve come up with a few guidelines that help me continue seeking help while protecting my heart when people let me down.

I was over at iBeleive last week, talking about disappointment, forgiveness, and learning to ask for help. Join me!