Early on, my friend Ruby absorbed the message that a “strong, independent” woman never seeks out help; she does everything all by herself, for herself.
Thus, Ruby is fast to offer help to anyone else who might need it — she’ll watch the kids and the dog; she’ll drive you to the emergency room and hold your hand while you wait; she’ll take some of the work off your desk if you’re having a bad week and complete it for you. But she’ll never ask anyone to do the same for her.
As a single mother Ruby did it all, saw to it all and carried it all on her own wee shoulders, raising a sweet-natured boy into manhood in the process. Her buzzwords were “strength” and “self-sufficiency,” even when it meant wearing shoes long in need of replacement. Challenges were risen to; personal needs brushed aside. She could look back on each day knowing she’d done her best by her world, and that any debts she’d incurred — those financial, social or personal obligations that can make a resolutely self-contained sort feel uncomfortably vulnerable — had been kept to a minimum.
And that all worked for her. Until suddenly, it didn’t.
As for so many of us, a cancer diagnosis proved to be the line — the one obstacle her strong will could not bend, nor her stiff spine break through.
Ruby put a good face on things through biopsies and MRI’s, and as cancer in one breast became cancer in both and discussions of surgical options and treatments took her diabetes into consideration. She presented a strong face to her family — the determined, extreme calm at the crux of her own private maelstrom. Then a pre-surgical stress test flagged a new concern: “It might be broken-heart syndrome,” the cardiologist mused.
And that was when she cracked.
My friend has faced the challenges of aging with grace and humor, but the whole “cancer-diabetes-wait-my-heart-is-broken-now?” trifecta did her in. For the first time since childhood, Ruby felt utterly unmoored from her own strengths.
“You need to let yourself lean on your family and friends, a little,” I advised her. “It’s okay to say, ‘I need a hug, I need someone to fuss on me a little bit.’ Let people help!”
Uncomfortable with need and dubious about the whole endeavor, Ruby eventually hinted to her family that she was scared. “So much for your good advice,” she reported back, fuming. “They just said stuff like, ‘you have to take it a day at a time!’ I’m over here, terrified, and they’re no help at all!”
Sadly, people mostly don’t know what to say in such circumstances, particularly if they’ve never been asked for support. Ruby’s sudden need for the intimacy of consolation threw them off, a bit. Unsure about saying, “We’re scared too,” they fell back on “one day at a time,” which my friend — once she’d calmed down — recognized was sound advice. Cancer is scary. Sometimes you can only deal with it an hour (or even five minutes) at a time.
“You should forgive them for having no idea how to comfort you,” I told her, “because you’ve never needed them to before. This is new territory for everyone. Even if they’re not getting the words right, believe that they want the best for you and are praying for you.”
“And I hate myself for crying uncontrollably,” she wailed. “I really do.”
How often have we heard “strong” women say this — as if tears were a detestable fault or a sin against the perceived self? How many of us are walking around with broken hearts because we won’t permit ourselves the medicine of weeping and fully feeling the things we’ve determinedly repressed because we want that illusion of strength?
“That’s stupid,” I said, “You wouldn’t hate me, or one of your siblings, for crying; why should you hate yourself? Just STOP THAT and let yourself feel all the things you have a right to feel. You’re allowed. I give you permission!”
At the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, we read, “But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire … He will sit refining and purifying silver…” (Mal 3:2-3).
Set before all of us are weird, muddy amalgams of blessing and anxious terrors. God lives with us in the refining fires of our challenges, tempering and purifying us for something yet greater than all we know.
It is good to let ourselves acknowledge the fires, the better to endure them in trust until we are free.
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