Persona Non Grati

I want to be strong person. I don’t need lots of coddling and encouragement and attention. In fact, I kind of shy away from it. I don’t like neediness; most of all in myself. Oh, I’m well aware of my need of Christ and of the many (insert innumerable) times I’ve been bailed out by my family, parents, husband. I know. I know it but I don’t like it. Every time I have to turn to someone for help I want to kick the wall. I have actually kicked the wall more than once. I’m mature like that.
For many years I’ve grudgingly accepted the hand-out, the bail-out, the talk-it-out. I’ve been a walking advertisement for a new emotion I myself invented...gratishame. A combination of gratitude for the assist; shame that I needed it.
Gratishame wears one out. Makes you feel like walking mud. Also can make you a little resentful of the very persons who bail you. So I decided to hand over the gratishame to Christ. It wasn’t an epiphany where the heavens opened, angels sang and I glowed with inner wisdom. It was a years long process of needing, taking, and shame. It only took me 30+ years to decide I don’t like gratishame. So God, through a variety of methods I like to call “human beings” helped me embrace a new emotion.
I was blogging and reading some of the comments and realizing I’m in need of the feedback. Needy again...brace yourself. Then I realized I loved it. It felt so good to have the connection. To need and be responded to.
I checked my e mail and had several from people in my life. People I need to hear from. People who offered me help with some upcoming “stuff”; asked me how my life was going; encouraged me in some things I’m working on; cheered me for some things I’m accomplishing. I need those people. The literal hand out, the emotional lift up, the spiritual feedback, the opportunity to try, today, whatever needs trying.
I’m needy. But I’m not gratishamed of it. I’m gratijoyful. I have learned that it’s all about love, and I need it. I need to be loved and love without expression is...not sure what it is but it ain’t lovely. I have walked around doubting I was loved and at the same time resenting the expressions of love that crashed into my life constantly. The hand-out, the bail-out, the talk-it-out...that was all love with legs on it. Love that walked into my life to make it better, to get me through. Love with hands and arms that stretched out to pull me back just before I lost it all.
There’s a very good chance if you’re even reading this that you are on my gratijoyful counsel because you’re reading my words. I’m going to assume (if I’m wrong, I don’t care) that you love me. You’re encouraging me, backing me up, pushing me forward, counting me worth a few minutes; just by reading. So thank you.
If I tried to make a list I’d leave out someone. So please accept this mass thank you. It’s a thank you for those who reached out to me despite my furrowed brow and sarcastic tone. It’s a thank you that God kept sending loving walking into my life when I didn’t recognize it and tried to show it the door. It’s the funeral service for gratishame and the debutante ball for gratijoy. It’s my own reminder that I’m needy and I’m blessed to know it. It’s my attempt to tell you, Parents, Mr., Daboyz, Friends, Metroites, Ladies of P/P that you’ve sewed up some holes in my heart even when I wrestled against you. You’ve put dressings of JOY over wounds of shame. So thanks.

Romans 14:7
7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone.