I have been feeling very needy lately and honestly I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling needy. I like feeling in control (as I have mentioned before). I like feeling capable and able and independent and have a difficult time admitting that I need other people’s help. In fact I have a hard time even asking people to pray for me even though I know that I need their prayer.
Basically, though lately I’ve realized how desperately I need other people in every area of my life. I need help. I admit that I can’t do life on my own – any part of it really. So, there’s my confession. I know that I need people. The problem is that I have a very hard time actually acting like I need other people and letting that knowledge really sink into how I live my life. So, I need help. I need help needing people. I need help becoming needy. I need help letting people into my life and my heart. I need help needing.
I need help with that because, I am convinced that it is only in community, only through active involvement and dependence on the body of Christ, that we really grow and experience healing and life. I am convinced that the life God calls us to live is a communal life. We need each other. I need you. It’s hard for me to admit and live like that but I know that it is the truth. It is through the body of Christ that Christ reveals himself to us. It is through the Body of Christ that Christ often chooses to meet our daily needs. Christ often chooses to use his body to challenge, instruct, convict, and encourage us. But, if I don’t let others into my life, don’t let them know my needs or struggles or questions then how can they help me? How can they be Christ’s hands and feet to me? If I choose not to share my triumphs and victories and encouragements with them how can they rejoice with me? If I choose not to let them into my life why would they choose to let me into theirs? How can we really be the Body of Christ if we hold each other (and thus hold Christ) at arm’s length and don’t really let each other into our lives?
Those are my thoughts today… I think them, but I have a much harder time living them.
Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman
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Beth Stedman. wife. mommy. daughter. friend. homemaker. sinner. believer. writer. cook. dreamer. artist. yogi. photographer. 
This is a very good post. I think that everyone that I know (myself included) struggles with independence. We want to think that we are independent from one another, while God created us to be interdependent. I don’t know if this is cultural – i.e. American individualism – or not. But, when I’ve talked with people from other countries, especially less “developed” countries, this doesn’t seem to be as big of a problem.
I also suggest that this idea of independence demonstrates itself in our churches as well. We want to have “autonomous churches”, which simply shows our desire to demonstrate our independence. Instead, we should recognize that we are interdpendent as individuals and as the church.
I appreciate your sharing about your own struggles. This helps me work through some things in my own life. I hope you keep sharing about this, especially as God provides opportunities for you to demonstrate that you are not independent but interdependent upon Him and his children.
-Alan
Alan, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate your encouragement with this. And I loved how you took this thought farther and applied it to the independence that churches corporately exhibit – I’ll be thinking about that for a while.
Hi Beth. I’m not going to downplay the fact that we need eachother, BUT, I have found that to depend on anyone but God himself ends up in dissapointment. So when others let us down, do we say, “You don’t love me Lord” I know I have, but then I see how silly it was to think that. When I took my expectations from the shoulders of my friends and family, and placed my expectations on God, then I was so much more at ease, because I stopped “expecting” others to give me what only God can. And what is that for me? Acceptance.