House Fires and Peeling the Onion of Need

It’s been a little over a month since we were awakened by smoke detectors in the wee hours of the morning, going from sleepy irritation to wide-eyed alarm and action in just a matter of minutes. As a PSA, sometimes your smoke detector is going off because there is actually a fire. Be advised.

I’m sitting here in “home” for now, still a little strangely disoriented when I wake up here. 

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Unexpectedly having to leave our home. Looking for a temporary place to live. Looking for another temporary place to live. Shuffling belongings hastily thrown into laundry baskets from one place to another. It hasn’t been fun, but when your house catches on fire, you certainly find a newfound gratitude for the simple fact that you and all your family are alive and well. 

You also find a newfound gratitude for the body of Christ. Basically, as soon as the news spread, so many people offered us help, offered us clothes, offered us meals, money, groceries. So many asked us, “What do you need?” It’s been beautiful and humbling. It’s also been illuminating. 

As person after person asked us the same question, “What do you need?” I began to notice an impulse. An impulse to downplay. An impulse to be vague. I might even say an impulse to hide. Why did I feel the instinct to deny our need? Why did expressing need make me feel uncomfortable? Why did I feel that I might rather muscle through a tough time rather than actually say, “I need _____.”?

I spent some time really analyzing it. At surface level, I think there’s a simple desire not to be a burden to others. Did we really need someone to drop off groceries? We could get by. Did I really need my friends to take my kids? It’s helpful of course, but not strictly necessary. All of this was internal of course. 

I am pretty good at talking myself out of my need.

I peeled the onion a little more and found what you often find as you dissect the human heart: pride. There’s something so humbling about being truly needy and even more humbling about admitting you are truly needy. The impulse I felt to protest being served was, at its root, my pride and self-sufficiency trying to parade as strength and grit.

I could peel the onion a little more and find something else that was a little more surprising: shame. Do I feel ashamed of being needy? That’s silly. It did seem silly yet, that’s what it felt like. I felt almost embarrassed to say, “Yes, I really need this.” It made me feel vulnerable. It made me feel…exposed. 

In my book, Majoring in Motherhood, I talk a lot about how Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden led them to feeling ashamed and exposed. The concept of them hiding their nakedness from God is obviously tied to their sin, but I’ve been thinking it’s more. Not only did they hide from God, but they also hid from each other. Not only was their sin exposed, but also their fragility and need, their stark and bare humanity. Maybe that’s something we’re all eager to cover up too. 

It can feel easier to hide than being openly humble and needy. To deny our need is to cover it with age-old fig leaves, with money, with things, with a stiff arm pushed out saying, “Thanks, I’m okay!” rather than a palm held up saying, “I need help.” To admit our need is to be vulnerably human. It is to be exposed.

Born into this world of hiding, Christ stepped in, revealed. While we covered up our humanity, Christ put on His. While we strove to wear the illusion of self-sufficiency, He came to us naked, needy and exposed, a dependent infant. While we were trying to erase the need of being human, He was redeeming it.

The God of all things needed to be held, needed to be fed, needed his diaper changed and to be taught to read. 

And the night before he would be shamed and exposed upon the cross, he did something simple yet profound. He knelt down to wash his disciples’ dirty feet. I understand Peter’s protests. They’re rooted in the same things as mine: pride, embarrassment, fear of exposure. Let the Messiah touch my dirty feet? Let him that close to who I really am? Close enough to see the sores on my heel and the dirt between my toes? I’d rather not. Yet, Jesus’s reply is stark, “If I do not wash you, you have no share of me.” 

You cannot be saved if you will not be served. And you cannot be served if you will not let him close enough to see what you’re ashamed to show.

Jesus takes it even further and commands we also let others get up close too. “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” He commands us to be willing to serve and to be served, to lay down our pride and let others in to see what we truly are: all too human and all too needy. 

If we will, there’s freedom on the other side of the fear. There’s reconnection on the other side of hiding. There’s hope in being vulnerable enough to let others see and meet your needs. There’s something bought back from Genesis 2, something that whispers of a new Eden where we’re all exposed–needy and unashamed.