Lessons from a Bad Mad

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16, NIV).

One of the things that my daughter Anna is struggling with is asking for help when she is feeling overwhelmed or anxious. It is not that she doesn’t know she needs help, or that she doesn’t want it, but because she is embarrassed to ask for it. She doesn’t want to have to ask for help and she does not want to be judged, ignored, or rebuffed. So rather than put herself out there, she bottles it up. She has a good mask, she is able to hide the fact that anything is wrong for quite a while. But the heart can only hold so much; and so inevitably at some point when the pressure is just too great she explodes.

What I have been learning is that her tactic is not unique, nor is it a peculiarity of her depression or NLD. In fact, it is very common…human even. Embarrassment, the fear of what others might think, the feeling that you should be able to figure things out for yourself all keep us from asking for help when we know we need it.

Last week I was really struggling with anger. Why is not important, but I can tell you it had been decades since I felt that angry. It was nasty. And I could not hide it. I asked God to take it away and nothing happened. That made me even more frustrated and therefore more angry.

A Christian, pastor, author of a book on forgiveness, a major grace guy, and I could not get rid of my anger. What the heck was wrong with me?

Finally I decided that I needed to get some help. So I shared what was going on with three friends who I knew were very prayerful and gracious people. By the end of the day, my anger was gone.

Here are some of the things I have been learning though this:

• I have a clearer understanding of why Anna does what she does, which helps me better identify with her and have compassion and understanding in her difficulty.
• I have again been learning that anger is dangerous and if you feed it, it will grow; and the bigger it gets the harder it is to kill.
• God is always teaching that you are not enough and that He is enough. One of the ways He does that is by working though others to help you. If I had asked for help sooner, I could have saved myself a lot of grief. But pride and fear kept me thinking I should know better, that I could do it, that I was good enough. Wrong. I am not. I am not supposed to be. He is. He will always be enough. And He will often show that by using other people to bring His grace and love you.

So if you find yourself in similar shoes with depression, anxiety, fear, shame, anger, or whatever your personal brand of isolating thought or emotion may be, ask for help and prayer. It is not weak to do so, it is weak not to do so. And, trust me, you’ll be glad you did.