I love you, I am sorry, and I need help are said to be three of the hardest statements to say to someone else. All three invoke a state of vulnerability. Anyone who expresses their love for another is open to rejection if the other person does not feel the same way. Those who express their remorse for causing pain to another brave the chance of being denied forgiveness. A person in need of help, who already may feel guilty asking for assistance, may be exposed to someone who turns them down.
In the illusion of the ego driven world, being vulnerable is parallel to being weak and weakness in our society is deemed inexcusable. We are brought up to be the best and the brightest we possibly can be. We are raised in a competitive environment where there has to be a winner. Looking out for number one and separating from the group are thought to be good methods to achieve success.
For myself, my vulnerability would reside in asking for financial help. If I need any other kind of assistance, I have no problem shouting out a request for help from the mountain tops but asking for money turns my insides out. If I need financial support, I feel like a failure. I think about how I should have made better decisions and had planned a smarter financial portfolio for myself. I never learned about financial planning and my parents certainly never taught me how to manage money. I learned to do as they did. I could balance a checkbook but my savings account rounded zero more often than I would like to admit. Growing up with a single parent, money was always scarce and living paycheck to paycheck was common place. I grew up and repeated the same pattern. I was always working in order to live. I was a slave to money and its abundance was always out of reach. The last time I had to ask my mom for money, I cried. I cried in shame and in remorse because I knew she needed her income to pay her own bills. I was an adult and thought adults were supposed to be able to handle their own responsibilities without asking for help. I felt like a disgrace and a burden.
I thought about my feelings surrounding myself and money and was bothered by them. Financial abundance can never come into awareness with the underlying belief that money is hard to get or always out of reach. If one part of me thinks that money is a horrible master always inflicting pain and suffering on its servant, then abundance in all its glory is not anywhere in sight. If I think asking for financial help is shameful, then how can the Universe align me with it? I cannot ask the Universe for abundance and expect to get it if I really think I am doing a disgraceful thing by asking for it. The Universe does not differentiate between who I ask but in my sincerity of the request.
New thoughts and new beliefs were needed in how I related to money. First I needed to look at my feelings when I asked for financial help. At any point in someone’s life, no matter how much one has planned, unexpected events can happen where a person finds herself in a situation that requires her to ask for financial assistance. This humbled person courageously places herself in the hands of another in hopes that her request will be answered. Another’s ability to answer and accept the request shows compassion but the blessing comes in two parts. The first blessing was that the person was around to serve as support for her and the second was that the person had the means to provide assistance. Furthermore, I needed to believe that money did not define who I am. It does not outline my character or my worthiness as a human being. I needed to believe that money was an abundant blessing in my life and I am blessed to be able to pass on that blessing to others. In Doreen Virtue’s recent newsletter, she writes, “…when you allow yourself to receive, you have more available to give to others.”
I am blessed to have a support system to lift me up when I am down. We are a group and if one of us falters there is always someone to step in to encourage and provide assistance. If my supporters needed my help, I would gratefully offer it because I know how hard it is to ask. Some go a long time without needing support and forget what it feels like to reach out when it becomes necessary. When someone achieves victory, success does not depend on one; it is the accumulation of support given by all. Support comes in many forms and it is a gift to have a support system to lean on in times of distress. God is alive and well in this support. Depending on the season, sometimes a person is one who serves as the support system and at other times is the one who is supported.
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