Help! It’s a word many won’t say, but most should scream if it’s going to move them forward in life. I’ve never understood human nature, including my own, that would walk away from support it needs to be better. It’s funny. Our minds, poor mindsets, generational issues and pride will literally talk our mouths out of opening up and asking for assistance.

I think the famous song from the Color Purple was written for me…”God is Trying to Tell You Something”. Like a baby needs a bottle and like a teacher needs a pay raise, I need help! In the last decade help and I have gone hand-in-hand. I’ve been through a year and a half of divorce counseling, a year of physical therapy for an arm with lymphedema, two years of physical therapy for a leg and back injury, and that’s just the specific help I want to tell you about. I’ve had to humble myself (and I needed humbling) to ask people to drive me around, give me money, braid my hair, help me up the stairs, carry my purse, give me a job, give me money (I know I’ve already said that), hear my inner fears, let me cry on their shoulders, pray for me, let me vent, keep my secrets and so on and so on and so on. I needed help!

I remember growing up. My parents were in, let’s just say, a financial place that was not cute. They decided to seek a financial advisor, let her “up in their business” (as some say), trust her with her expertise and follow her tough-love advice to the letter in order to come out of debt. They did it and were debt free. I remember growing up and my father taking Carl Budding lunchmeat sandwiches for lunch and driving an old, ugly banana yellow car so that my mother and he could be a blessing to their extended family and pay for someone to iron our clothes and help clean the house. This was not at all because we were rich, but because raising three children, maintaining a marriage and helping take care of other people’s business can be overwhelming so they got help.
I also remember growing up and experiencing the murder of my first love at the age of 17. We were no longer “going together”, but on the night he was murdered we’d had a fabulous time at the Cobb’s Midfield 6 Theater and were supposed to reconnect with a group of friends later that night. While traveling to meet them a car ran a friend and me off the road. We were traumatized and decided to go back to my house. The next morning I woke to the news that my first love was dead. I was devastated, beyond devastated as I reflect back some 20+ years later. One of the first things my mother did after all my spiritual support was in place was take me straight to a psychologist. Why? Because I needed help.

The moral to this story is: The difference in where you are and where you should be is found in the help you have. It’s your life. You owe it to yourself to allow others on the journey to cause it to be all that it can be!

-Angela Moore