My Thoughts Today
Being needed is so important to us. Intrinsic to loving someone is needing them with you.
When my husband and I were dating it was an extremely significant moment to him when I told him that I needed him. He told me that he had waited and hoped his whole life to be needed by someone.
We all need to be needed.
And we need to be needed for ourselves, not for the things that we can do. When I have asked my husband how he needs me, he is quick to point out the house and the girls would fall apart without me. I have often pointed out in return and quite bluntly, that he could simply hire someone to help with the bills, clean, cook, organize, nanny, and other wife and mother duties. I want to know how I, myself, am needed. Not for what I can do, but who I am to him. Not for what I can do that anyone else could, but what I can do that no one else can.
But some days I feel just a little too essential to my family. Rosebud needs me to nurse and hold her, to rescue her from Turtle's shoves, to be my little baby. Turtle needs countless things such as telling her which feet to put her flip-flops on, cooking her her eggs in the morning, helping in the bathroom, saving her from a shirt stuck on her head, preserving her block towers from destruction. She also needs my patience, my consistency, my attention and my sense of humor. My husband needs me to help him find enter his receipts into the computer, to provide him with clean socks, to make sure he eats some lunch, to help him find his shoes in the morning (oh, and his keys and his notebook and his wallet . . . ). He also needs my patience, my willingness to listen to him about work, my efforts to put him first, my help to relax and destress.
Some days I want to be un-needed.
Being needed can be a burden. It can weigh you down and constrict you to be meeting others needs when you are pushing your own needs so far back into the depths that you don't even remember what they are. Then, at the breaking moment, you just instinctually try to shove everyone who is needing something from you far, far away until you figure out where you are, what you need and how to get it.
It's like a self-preservation moment: Stop taking from me until I have something I can give you without breaking.
In days like today I give thanks for the grace of Catholicism. I thank God that we believe that the grace is there to rise above human self-preservation instincts, instincts to acquire at all costs what I need for me, and look beyond to a higher plane of self-sacrifice, of love, of not counting the cost, of giving everything you are. Because of Catholicism, I can see the meaning in all of this.
I can see a Man on a Cross.
And I can try to smile. He won't ask me for anything He didn't do Himself first. And I keep going in that knowledge.
When my husband and I were dating it was an extremely significant moment to him when I told him that I needed him. He told me that he had waited and hoped his whole life to be needed by someone.
We all need to be needed.
And we need to be needed for ourselves, not for the things that we can do. When I have asked my husband how he needs me, he is quick to point out the house and the girls would fall apart without me. I have often pointed out in return and quite bluntly, that he could simply hire someone to help with the bills, clean, cook, organize, nanny, and other wife and mother duties. I want to know how I, myself, am needed. Not for what I can do, but who I am to him. Not for what I can do that anyone else could, but what I can do that no one else can.
But some days I feel just a little too essential to my family. Rosebud needs me to nurse and hold her, to rescue her from Turtle's shoves, to be my little baby. Turtle needs countless things such as telling her which feet to put her flip-flops on, cooking her her eggs in the morning, helping in the bathroom, saving her from a shirt stuck on her head, preserving her block towers from destruction. She also needs my patience, my consistency, my attention and my sense of humor. My husband needs me to help him find enter his receipts into the computer, to provide him with clean socks, to make sure he eats some lunch, to help him find his shoes in the morning (oh, and his keys and his notebook and his wallet . . . ). He also needs my patience, my willingness to listen to him about work, my efforts to put him first, my help to relax and destress.
Some days I want to be un-needed.
Being needed can be a burden. It can weigh you down and constrict you to be meeting others needs when you are pushing your own needs so far back into the depths that you don't even remember what they are. Then, at the breaking moment, you just instinctually try to shove everyone who is needing something from you far, far away until you figure out where you are, what you need and how to get it.
It's like a self-preservation moment: Stop taking from me until I have something I can give you without breaking.
In days like today I give thanks for the grace of Catholicism. I thank God that we believe that the grace is there to rise above human self-preservation instincts, instincts to acquire at all costs what I need for me, and look beyond to a higher plane of self-sacrifice, of love, of not counting the cost, of giving everything you are. Because of Catholicism, I can see the meaning in all of this.
I can see a Man on a Cross.
And I can try to smile. He won't ask me for anything He didn't do Himself first. And I keep going in that knowledge.
Comments
Your ability to express with such clarity has always baffled me. This is an incredible post. I think August 2008 I was so wrapped in my own tornato world of stuff I was unable to realize your words. I would trade in an instant the feeling of being needed for something that mattered. I am needed at work but extremely replaceable. Your blood, sweat and tears you shed today are building a bright and incredible future. Mine are just making me unnecessarily wrinkled and grey too young for naught. Your efforts have long lasting effects on something inspiring.