Spandex is not always a good thing!

By Courtney White (Chaplain) 

I find myself, most nights, on the couch watching TV madly typing away on my computer, or doing the laundry, or washing the dishes whilst cooking dinner; or perhaps even trying to find moments when I can shovel semi-cold food into my mouth at the same time as gently coercing my son to eat all of his dinner. Sometimes, I can have so many things on the go that, undoubtedly, I feel that if I squish one more thing into my to-do list I’ll drop my bundle and everything will fall down into a heap. I can’t forget the bedtime routine. In our house that is a mad frenzy of multi-tasking too. 

Life seems busy - everyone’s is, of that I am sure. I am quite convinced that I should be able to juggle everything in my life, all at once of course, and that if I don’t meet this expectation I have failed myself, my son, and my husband. Everyone else can juggle all these things so I should be able to as well, right?   

I don’t know why I feel like I should be a superwoman. Is this something I have subconsciously learnt from the perfection-obsessed media? Have I taken on this expectation from my elders, something that was taught to me since childhood? Part of this superwoman ruse, that I have so heavily leant upon, is that I should be able to do all things alone; I should be able to juggle all of this by myself. Here I am - figuratively speaking; spandex tights, cape, and mask fearlessly holding my entire world up on my shoulders; a glistening domestic goddess (I wish), wrapped in false heroism and armed with equivocally authentic facebook posts.      

In amongst all of my... mess, I love to help those around me too. Which suits me just fine as a Chaplain - I’m a helper. Gerard Egan (2018), a professor of Organisation Studies and Psychology, discusses some of the skills that helpers need to be effective. In reading his book “The Skilled Helper”, I was surprised - all of the skills he wrote about require a partnership between the helper and the receiver, furthermore, these roles often do and should swap between individuals. What I mean is, in relationships, people should have the opportunity to play both roles - helper and receiver. Turn-taking, Connecting, Mutual Influencing, and Co-Creating Outcomes (Egan 2018), it’s all part of it.

But wait a minute. I’m good - I got this life thing down pat. I’m carrying it all by myself and I can keep doing so for as long as it takes for me to reach “deity status”! 

It’s not that I don’t need anyone else to help me, it’s more that, well...I feel bad passing things onto other people to help with my “stuff”, including my husband.

It reminds me of the biblical principle of the “Body of Christ”, that which we all belong to. We are not just individuals working busily for our own needs and desires, we are individuals working together as a community, just like the human body - one complete body made up of many different physiological components, each having their own roles to play. Yet, the hand only works because it is connected to the wrist, tendons, nerves, blood vessels, tissues etc. All the components work together for the common goal. In reality, The Body of Christ perhaps looks like - my husband allowing me to have a good sleep by getting up in the middle of the night to settle our son (which he willingly does often), or the Integration Aide in your child’s class who stays back on their own time to help them with homework, or the sacrificial people of BHCS’s Community Care who make food for our foodbank, and even the grumpy parent who has waited 30 mins for their child to get to the car at pick up time. We are all part of this community and, therefore, we are not alone.

My lesson then: ask for help when I need it - I don’t need to stretch on the spandex super-suit anymore, I don’t need to carry everything by myself. When I feel like I am going to drop my bundle, I can ask for help from those around me (fellow parts in the body) because we are all human; we all need help sometimes. Surely, I can learn to swap from helper to receiver. 

When I am down and out, you - my community, pick me up. When you are down, I will pick you up. It’s a reciprocal thing - not a spandex super-suit thing.                  

Egan, Gerard Dr. 2018. The Skilled Helper. 9th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage.