Get a Handle On It!

Years ago while travelling India, I remarked on the way Indian women swept their storefronts, front stoops or walkways, using small hand-held brooms; you know, the kind you find in Ye Old Amish Homestead. Delicately wrapped in colorful silk saris, the Indian women would hunch themselves in half and sweep large areas with these short handled brooms. It looked excruciating to me and I thought, “Get a handle on it!” It seemed like an obvious and helpful solution. Why break your back?

This image has come back to me several times in my life as a fitting metaphor for how I often find myself struggling with an antiquated pattern, behavior or method to clean up the messes in my life – how I unnecessarily break my back rather than do a simple thing: ask for help.

Today was one of the worst I’ve had in a long list. A restless rodent scratching in the wall of one of our closets kept me up all night long. Today, after paying the exterminator 200 bucks, I was licking my chops at the thought of a much needed night of quiet ahead, and what to my utterly dismayed ears I hear? - the same infuriating noise coming from behind the three holes he drilled in the wall.

Next: after picking my car up from the service station yesterday, it broke down on the way to work this morning, making me late for an important meeting. After paying the service station another 250, the car broke down again on my way home from dinner with a friend. This, while my husband is reading novels in the warm California sun – a trip I insisted he take to get some much needed R&R, ha! There’s more to my sad, sad list but you get the idea.

After gritting my teeth, pounding my fists and suffering with a recurrent stomach pain, I thought, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I get a handle on it? This is all the “small stuff” the stuff you’re not supposed to sweat. It took me all day to remember to ask for some help, to truly get a handle on my foul mood. I paused just long enough to say two simple words, “Help, please.”

I didn’t address it specifically - in case “God” isn’t available, I want to leave it open to: “Goddess”, “Ganesh” “Gratefulness” or “Giant Maple Spirit.” It’s not that I’m so utterly uncommitted; it’s just that what matters to me now, is making the admission that I do in fact need help. I need a handle on this dinky little broom I’m trying to sweep Arizona with. I need to stand upright and keep going, not break my back with old habits of martyrdom and negativity.

“Help please” means that I remember I am not alone – somehow... and I’m not choosy about how either. Bring it on! I’ll take that help from every benevolent direction it can possibly come.

What’s triumphant for me is to reach that place where I realize I am holding a short-handled broom; the very brief moment it takes to become aware that there is another way. And to remember that when my reserves run dry, I can seek replenishment at the source. Suddenly, there is room to breathe and the “small stuff” that felt so laden and big right sizes itself and I get a better handle on it. by Rev. Katherine Silvan

“Lord have mercy on me, so I may have mercy on myself.” Rob Silvan