When my sister’s and I were all still under ten years old, we returned home late with our parents one rainy night in the spring. We had been sleeping in the car and the expectation was we were to go straight from the car into our beds. My mom was ensuring we lived up to our agreement when we heard my dad call for her from downstairs with panic in his voice. My mom told us to stay upstairs but feeling scared, we all followed her anyway. My dad had just turned off the power from the breaker panel and everything was dark. It was hard to see but what greeted us could be heard and felt.
Our finished basement had seemingly been transformed into a fish tank that was rapidly still filling with water. We could hear it rushing in from somewhere. There were random things floating around that we would hit as we waded through to where my tall, lean dad was standing almost knee deep in water. His hands were on his hips while he assessed the brick retaining wall that had transformed into a water fall. Water poured in continuously. There was a moment that all of us just stared and then my dad decisively said to my mom, “Call Nick and Kay.” These were my parents best friends who had young kids of their own. It was after 11 p.m.
My dad immediately went outside in the rain to dig a trench in the flowerbed that stretched along the top back-side of the water-gushing retaining wall. My mom was doing her best inside to get some of the water out and using buckets stacked on partly submerged furniture to catch the water still pouring in. My sisters and I were busy ‘swimming’ and rescuing some of the things floating around our basement.
Once my parents friends arrived, our honoury Auntie and Uncle, it was after midnight. They’d organized for a neighbour to stay with their own kids much to our disappointment. My Uncle joined my dad in filling empty feed bags from our horse barn with sand and then they stacked them into the trench my dad had dug out along the wall. My aunt was inside with my mom dealing with the water. The more the feed bags were stacked, the less that the water flowed in. From our kid perspective, the excitement quickly dwindled to a trickle and it was late anyway. We went to bed but my Aunt and Uncle stayed to help my parents until the sky started to lighten just before the sun rose.
Do you reach out for help when life threatens to flood your life with unexpected challenges?
It can be tough to overcome the concern that a request for help might be inconvenient for someone else. The vulnerability required in admitting you need help at all can also be a big hurdle.
What if you consider the other side of things; the times that you have been given the opportunity to help someone who really needed it. How did that feel? Maybe it was physical help like painting or helping with a move, or taking care of kids when there was an emergency, creating a go-to recipe inventory during a health crisis, driving hours to pick up a forgotten key, helping to write the speech or the apology or goodbye letter, connecting someone with a job opportunity, or being the shoulder to cry on or the hand to hold, or maybe you helped to make the arrangements or call for reinforcements.
A request for help can often communicate, “I trust you. You are the person I choose in this moment.” These exchanges, this giving and receiving from both sides, are valuable amongst friends. It has enormous potential to deepen existing bonds.
Asking for help can be difficult. Saying no to a request can be difficult. There will also be friends who don’t know how to ask and are equally unwilling to receive. There will be times that you risk reaching out and the person you choose disappoints you. And sometimes when you figure out these limitations, yours and theirs, it can shake the foundation of a relationship. It can make you question everything while also help you learn something if you are paying attention.
There is always a lens you can shine on yourself no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the outcome. There are always ways to nurture a deeper awareness of yourself and of the people you have chosen to walk through life with…even if it is only for a little while.
Just like in meditation, be curious about it all.
Some friends aren’t the middle-of-the-night-save-me-from-the-flood people. And isn’t that okay? During different seasons of your life you might seek out different friends anyway and be enriched by those who are happy to swim around and look for treasures with you and then, when the excitement fades, have enough good sense to go to bed.
Enjoy all your friends and this link 🙂
