More from Anne Lamott in Help, Thanks, Wow, this at the conclusion of the “Help” part:
“Praying ‘Help’ means that we ask Something give us courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems. We…turn our eyes to something else: to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills…someplace else, anything else. Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle.
It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because it thinks you have lost. But in surrender you have won.”
I think Lamott has this about right. Sometimes, until that “Help” request comes from within me, my insistence on doing things (cue up Sinatra) my way blinds me to any possible path or outcome other than the one developed in my head. Merely (merely?) asking for “help” takes me away from that foolish thought just long enough to let some light in, as they say, through the crack. In that sense, the miracle is not necessarily the ultimate outcome, but that I softened my hard-headedness just long enough to consider that I might possibly be wrong, or (I like this option better) at least that I may not know everything.
It occurs to me... 