Shifting the Burden Mentality

And finding peace in needing help.

Shifting the Burden Mentality

Photo by Jake Pierrelee on Unsplash

As I'm writing today, I am on the second day of feeling ill and fatigued. I find that I really struggle with being sick — it makes me doubt my self-worth and my usefulness. The word that often comes to mind is burdensome. I hate being a burden.

When I am sick and need to lean on my mother's support to help take care of the children or simply cannot be as engaged with them as I usually am, I question everything. I feel so fragile. Typically, I feel like I have a fairly good handle on things and the help my mom provides is more task-oriented. When I'm sick, though, it's just all hands on deck while I remove myself from the proceedings.

But today, as I lay in bed resting while my baby napped and my mother watched my older son, I realized how far this burden mentality has reached for me. What does being a burden really mean? To me, asking for help is being a burden, but paying someone for help is fine. Paying someone to nanny my children is not burdensome — asking my mother for help is. Paying a daycare to watch my children all day is not burdensome — having a friend help out when I'm sick is. I don't think I am the only person who feels this way. I think this is endemic to our culture — if you can afford help, you've earned it. If you ask for help, you need to get it together.

Since when is community, village, friendship, and family burdensome but paid labor is not? Earning enough to pay someone to help you feels like your right and a noble endeavor. But depending on friends and family when things are hard often feels like you are mooching off them. Even when you've built your life around depending on your community, like moving closer to those you love, it can feel like you must not have a good handle on things. You don't have things organized enough so you must rely on the kindness of others.

Obviously, this isn't a very biblical point of view. Giving people the opportunity to do good, to help and take care of others, is a wonderful thing. Proverbs 19:17 says, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done." Why shouldn't we give our support systems the chance to do good and feel good about it in the process?

But I think in this modern world, where responsibility to others feels like a negative thing and where defining our authentic selves means creating distance from those we love, asking for help is a burden. People don't want to be bothered. And earning enough money to pay others to do the job a support system could help with feels like the truest kindness because you aren't asking people to go out of their way.

But I wouldn't want a stranger to take care of my children instead of my family. Making enough money to pay someone else to help in my home rather than giving my children the gift of a present grandmother, for example, is not my ideal. I would rather be a burden because I depended on those I love than feel “empowered” by wealth I could use to skirt around the interpersonal connections that bind. And perhaps encouraging families, friends, and communities to view those responsibilities to one another as opportunities rather than burdens is good, too.

I am so blessed that my family doesn't view helping as burdensome. My mother gladly took the children these past few days and gave me time to rest. But similar to how being a SAHM is often viewed as lowlier work than a paid job, asking for help rather than paying for it can feel lowlier too.

Let's not give in to that temptation. And let's change the narrative. Communities, families, and friends should be there for each other. What a blessing that we get to be.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!