Mormons tend to be good at giving service to others, but we need to make sure we're open to receiving help as well.
I recently read The Gifts of Imperfection by the popular TED speaker, Brene Brown. It’s about embracing your authentic self, among other things, and at one point she says this:
“Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”
This hit me with absolute clarity and made me realize how wrong we are when we elevate our self-sufficiency to the point that we never share with ward members when we’re having a surgery, or when a problem arises that others might help us through. (Yes, I know there’s medical privacy, but I’m hoping you get my point, that some of us keep too much under wraps– from spiritual tragedies to grieving a death to legal entanglements to moves to job losses, and so on.)
For one thing, humans crave—and benefit from—connections. We need to need each other. It’s healthy and it’s God’s design for us to bear one another’s burdens, even “mourn with those who mourn.” (Mosiah 18:8-9)
But when we wrap ourselves in a cloak of privacy to the exclusion of letting others see our struggles and pain, we actually set ourselves apart from “those sufferers” and not in a pretty way.