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LISTEN

“Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”—PSALM 25:4-5 (NIV)

Reflect
It is not easy to admit that I can’t do it all and that I may need help. The cultural narrative we are told is that we should be able to handle it all on our own or “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.” But let this historian tell you what this really
means. *Sounds of a historian rolling up her sleeves.* In the early 19th century, bootstrapping originally meant trying to do something ridiculous, like lifting yourself up by your own hair.20 It’s impossible. So maybe we should simmer
down imagining that our individual selves can carry the world on our shoulders. It takes a village to raise a child, and a community of faith to sustain being human.

Respond
When was the last time you attempted to do the impossible like picking yourself off the ground by your own hair? Or
moving something ridiculously heavy without help? Share with a friend some of the absurd things you have attempted to do on your own, so you can both have a good laugh today. God knows we all need help asking for help.

20 Benjamin Zimmer. “Figurative Bootstraps (1834)” in Diacritiques: American Dialect Society (online newsletter). August 2005.

Blessing for when you need a second to think it over

Blessed are you who don’t have
all the right answers.
You who say “I don’t know” because
it’s the best response for now.

You who lean in, unafraid to learn, change, be
wrong along the way.

Blessed are you,
stretched and pressed and pulled
by the uncertainty,
deciding to not stay the same,
we are not who we were.

We have been pulled into the unknown
without our permission.

But the challenge is the same:
reveal truth with love amid the chaos
Blessed are you who realize that
community can help see truth more fully.

Being fragile amid a world of hammers
takes courage
to be wrong,
to learn something new,
to choose humility and kindness
over being right.

May we be people who don’t
have it all together
(and who are done posturing).
Curious, hopeful, courageous.21

21 Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. “For When You Need a Second to Think It Over” in The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days. (New York: Convergent Books, 2023). 94-95.

© KateBowler.com