You are Not on Your Own, Kid
This summer, I somehow convinced myself that not a single soul in Central Minnesota who owned a pickup truck could help me.
Please take a moment to appreciate how ridiculous that sentence is. I work in
agriculture. I am active on my family’s dairy farm. A significant percentage of my friends are farmers, married to farmers, related to farmers, employed by farmers. I personally have access to trucks and equipment at the farm.
And yet, in the middle of a big county fair project, I needed something hauled and had somehow convinced myself there was literally nobody I could ask.
Once I actually stopped to think about it, I realized how ridiculous that was. It was also becoming incredibly difficult to defend because the county fair itself was providing an embarrassing amount of evidence that I was wrong. People were showing up everywhere. They hauled things, built things, carried things, answered texts, found supplies, solved problems, gave up evenings, and did the million little jobs that needed to be done. Busy people with jobs and families and farms and plenty of reasons to say no still said, “Yep. I can help with that.”
The funny thing is, I love helping my people. I genuinely do. If someone I care about calls and needs something, I want to help. Need something hauled? Sure. Need food? What should I bring? Need someone to pick up a dress, help decorate for a shower, proofread the text before you send it, bring coffee, watch the kids, run an errand, work cattle, make a phone call, organize the details, deliver something, or figure out some random logistical mess? I am probably already putting my shoes on and asking what time you need me there.
Helping the people I love does not feel like a burden to me, especially since one of my love languages is acts of service.
So why have I somehow decided that this rule applied to me, but not to anybody else? Why was I allowed to enjoy showing up for my people, but if someone had to show up for me, I was obviously inconveniencing them?
The math was not mathing, so I pulled a Hannah classic and brought my thoughts to the Lord in Eucharistic Adoration.
Adoration is where I hear the Lord most clearly. There is something about sitting in the Real Presence of Jesus that quiets all the noise long enough for me to say what I am actually thinking, ask the questions I have been avoiding, and let Him gently bring direction and clarity to whatever mess I have managed to bring into the chapel with me.
So I asked the Lord, why am I the way that I am?
Why am I like this? Why is my first instinct always to figure everything out myself? Why do I assume I am inconveniencing people before I have even asked them for anything? Why do I give into the lie of self-reliance?
And sitting there in front of the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord brought me back to nineteen-year-old Hannah.
My mom, Shirley, died suddenly in a car accident a week before I turned nineteen. For years, there was something about that part of my story that I never really understood. I did not truly grieve my mom until almost eight years after she died. I knew that about myself; I just never understood why.
At that time, I was a freshman in college, and my life seemed so normal. If you saw me walking through the ag department, heading to class with my backpack on, laughing with friends, talking about homework, weekend plans, whatever nineteen-year-olds talk about, you probably would have had no idea that my mom had just died in a car accident.
I went to class, I did my work, I laughed, I kept moving, and life at school felt normal.
Then I would come home on the weekends, where that was my identity.
Coming home came with the annoying sympathetic head tilt and the questions. “How is your dad doing?” “How are the little girls?” “How is Leah doing?” And those were good and loving questions that came from a good place. Dad had just lost his wife. My younger sisters had lost their mom while they were still kids. Leah was pregnant with Mom’s first grandchild and would give birth just one week after the funeral. There were a lot of people I loved carrying a lot of grief.
And somewhere inside my nineteen-year-old brain, I started doing some math that nobody had asked me to do.
Dad has it worse. The little girls have it worse. Leah has it worse. They need more. I am doing pretty okay.
Nobody told me that. Nobody made me feel like my grief did not matter. People loved me, they loved our family, and they showed up like crazy!
But I think I subconsciously decided that since my grief was not the loudest grief in the room, it did not deserve a voice. Almost as if my subconscious told me, “You are on your own, kid.”
But in that moment, sitting in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I heard the Lord say, “Hannah, daughter of Shirley.”
And I was wrecked.
Daughter of Shirley.
Of course.
In all those years of understanding everyone else’s loss, I had somehow forgotten to make room for the fact that Hannah, daughter of Shirley, had lost her mom too.
That is where thirty-five-year-old Hannah sat beside nineteen-year-old Hannah and gave her the grace she had never given herself. It was as if I was sitting there with her, holding her hand and saying, “Your grief mattered too. You did not have to hold onto this for eight years. You are not on your own, kid. You never were.”
The Lord is so funny because, in that same moment, He brought me back to something that had happened earlier this summer.
A friend of mine had been praying for me when she shared an image she felt the Lord had placed on her heart. She saw me running a long race. And lining the road were people from every corner of my life: family, friends, people in my networks and communities, and people from different seasons and chapters from various stages of my life, all standing along the road cheering me on.
And suddenly, it felt as though the Lord was saying, “Hannah, open your dingbat eyes. I have been with you through all of the miles.”
I understood what He was showing me: the beauty of community.
We are human. We were made to live in community, to celebrate together, grieve together, encourage one another, challenge each other, share joy, laugh, pray, and walk through life alongside one another.
How beautiful is that?
Community may look different for each of us. It might look like your family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, church community, or the people who somehow accidentally became your people along the way. Whoever they are, they are the ones who know us, love us, hold us accountable, walk beside us, and keep showing up in ways both big and small.
I am so grateful for my community over the years, for the people I get to show up for, and for the gift of sharing life with people who know me, love me, challenge me, and continue to walk beside me.
And I am grateful the Lord reminded me that community can look like people cheering you on from the side of the road, or simply someone showing up when you need them with a pickup truck.
Until next time, your sister in Christ,
Hannah
Comments