Welcome to For the Love with Jen Hatmaker

I think this episode is going to resonate with so many of you, especially those of you who spend so much of your time figuring it out, handling the details, keeping the plate spinning, making the appointment, bringing the snacks and remembering all the things.

“Jen recorded this clip on a solo trip this summer, two weeks out from Major Surgery while her partner is in the middle of Kimo and her whole life is still waiting back home.”

And she gets honest about something most of us never say out loud that asking for help feels like admitting we're needy or weak, or that we can't handle it, and how none of that is actually true.

It's not a tidy, inspirational take, it's her working it out in real time, and while you're listening to this preview, find and follow for the love with Jen Hatmaker wherever you get your podcasts. Here's Jen. I'm thinking about all of us who struggle to ask for help. And again, this is no flex. It's not like, hey, we don't ask for help because we're awesome, and we just can handle everything, and we're strong, and we're independent. That is just not true, and that's not how it feels, and that's not how it works.

I think those of us who struggle to ask for help have some brutal combination of pride. The bad kind. And a false sense of self-sufficiency.

And this is somehow wrapped up in how people think of us.

“I'm describing myself right now, but it's got to apply to some of you.”

How do people think of us? Do they think of us? Do they think of me as needy? Do they think of me as irresponsible? I'm just giving you right now the thoughts in my brain. Do they think of me as she can't handle it?

Do they think of me as weak? Because like, I mean, I can tell you this in my life with a couple of exceptions right now,

if everything in that on my plate.

If I just picked up most of them individually, one at a time, you would look at that and go, "Okay, that's not that big of a deal." Or that's not that hard. Or that only takes such and such amount of effort, energy, and hours, and you would carry that over the finish line. And that's so largely true to some degree, not all of it. Some of these are, I've got a couple of plates that are so full.

They're the only thing on it. I, like, that's, you can hear, like, this is the song in my head, like, "Why can't you just handle that?" It's just when they're all together, sometimes when they've compounded and compounded, and then you add a couple of really, really big ones on top of it, really, really consequential. And don't forget, my favorite person, I mean, my partner and boyfriend is in Nashville right now,

just duking it out with cancer. He's in the middle of chemotherapy. And so that gives me also this sense of, I cannot be in all the places I need to be in one to be at once. I am realizing, because I started calling for help maybe three weeks ago. And there was nothing I could do because I was, I was incapacitated, that was surgery. Like, I was down, I was in the hospital for two days.

Like, it wasn't like a little procedure. It was a surgery. And so because there was nothing I could literally physically do and called in help on five different levels, I just started watching the very good, capable, loving, committed other adults in my life, step in to some of these places with such competency, of course. And I realized this is some lingering co-dependence that I have.

This idea that I and I alone have to fix it, can fix it. I'm this solver. The whole thing's going to fall apart without me. Nobody else can do this. Nobody else can help me. Nobody else understands the complexities of this particular thing like I do.

There's only a small category of things where that is true. Yes, I'm the only person that can call and wrangle with my insurance company. There's a handful of things that I indeed have to manage.

“But the truth is there was a lot that I could hand over.”

And I watched these other adults and family members go, we'll do that for you. We're going to show up for you. We'll be there at 10. I picked this up. I made this phone call for you. In some cases, I had this conversation with a person that you alone don't have to have by yourself.

We will join the group project here for some of these very, very heavy lifts.

And I realized it's the codependent who thinks she's indispensable. That life will capsize without her.

“And the truth is, when I finally just went, I cannot do it.”

I can't do it. Turns out other people can. And some of them can do it for themselves.

Co-dependency keeps people in a perpetual state of to some degree in some ways infantilization.

Because they do not have to show up and do their own work. They don't have to be responsible for the consequences because you're doing the things. And so like the way that I know this, I have talked about this.

“I have written about this. I have spoken about this. I have taught about this.”

I have some version of this in the last four books. Knowing it is one thing putting it into a practice is another. I felt this sense of like a complete lack of control. I've lost control and I love control. God, I love it. I love it. I love control. I love to feel like I'm controlling outcomes that I am in charge of how something goes.

That I get to make all the choices and decisions that get us from point A to point B. But I've lost that completely. It's just busted and all the ways I normally guard against that have crumbled. And here I am. And so I want to just tell you that I am a living breathing example of kind of what it looks like when...

I'm doing air quotes. You can't see me holding it all together for everyone. Finally, like busts. And your body, your life, and your capacity, just say no. Like, bitch, no. Like, we're not here for it. We can't do it.

I am living it. I'm living it right this second. This morning, I was in the phone call. I was on the phone with another family member asking, "How can I help?"

And I gave three ways. Here's what you can do.

And he was like, "On it. I'll make the call today." I'm like, "Look how easy that was. Look how easy that was." And then of course, not only does this do the solutions emerge, but they emerge in greater strength.

“Because guess what's better than one lady who thinks she's the center of the universe solving everything?”

Like, putting her efforts into practice, you know what's better than that? Ten of us. Ten of us. Rowen the boat. Ten people going, "Hey, we've got an oar. Let us roll on our little side for a minute. Let us do our part." I'm literally, I'm in it. I'm in practice right now. That was Jenn Hatmaker from an episode of her podcast "For the Love."

The full episode is available now. It's called "When Life Out Paces You," Rest isn't optional. And I think you're really going to love it. You can find for the love with Jenn Hatmaker wherever you get your podcasts.