Friends in Christ, as some of you might have noticed, Pr. Anna and I have been trying to publish a blog style post for Facebook on the 1st and 15th day of each month in 2020. We have been (mostly) successful in keeping to the schedule.

And then, this past week happened.

Every single one of our lives have been affected recently by the developing situation regrading COVID-19 and protecting vulnerable persons from getting sick. My own efforts were compounded last week when I had surgery to repair multiple hernias.

Now, the operation was successful and without complication, and I thank God for the medical professionals and my care team that were able to help me as I recover.

What I wasn’t expecting though was how difficult the most basic of tasks would be in the week after my surgery. I wasn’t able to bend over to tie my shoes. I struggled to move from standing to sitting, or sitting to standing. Each step wasn’t without caution or concern for aggravating my healing body.

This caused me to do the unthinkable: I had to learn to ask for help.

As a 32-year-old American male, privileged and educated, I have been largely able to make it this far in life from a position of privilege and without much regard for my own inability or shortcomings. Well, the surgery, while successful, reminded me that I cannot live, or succeed on my own.

This stretches all the way back to Genesis 1 & 2, when God said, “It is not good for humans to be alone”. We are wired for connection. We come together in community as siblings in Christ to help one another when we are not able to figure things out on our own.

As we continue to journey together, let us not be too proud or stubborn to ask for help. And for those of us in season of life that we can bless others with our own abundance, let us look for ways to help those around us in our community.

Dan Miglets-Nelson