One day after we left Damascus, I snapped my plastic spoon in my jar of peanut butter at lunch. It was a clean break at the base of the spoon, leaving me with a very tiny scoop and no handle. It would be four days before I had an opportunity to get another spoon.
The three of us (plus the other two hikers also eating lunch at the shelter) stared in shock. I started laughing. What else was there to do?
“This is going to suck,” I finally said.
Stealth cleaned off his spoon and passed it over. “Until we can get to town, you can use my spoon. Any time you need it, just say so.”
“Thanks,” I said, already trying to find a way to fix my spoon, trying to find a way so I wouldn’t need help.
Oldest, homeschooled, farmer, deaf, girl… I don’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t feel pressure to prove that I was enough.
I had to prove I was tough enough to run with the boys, strong enough to handle the farm, smart enough to be homeschooled, mature enough to be the oldest sister, deaf enough for my struggles to be legitimate, hearing enough not to be a burden, feminine enough to be a girl. There was so much to prove, and to so many people.
Everywhere I turned, it felt like there were people holding up scorecards, waiting and watching for me to mess up so they could call, aha! We knew it. She is not enough, she does not belong, she is a fraud, just as we suspected. They would mark it down on their scorecards and it would be there forever, that time Sparks failed, stumbled, or was a burden.
How could you, Sparks?
There were rules to this enough-ness, rules that I never could seem to figure out. That is, the more I tried to be enough, the less I secure I felt. I could try all I wanted, but I would always fall short.
That’s what help was then. Someone finding or witnessing a flaw, an inadequacy, a failing. A hand extended with a caveat: you’re not enough without me. A reprimand: I’m bailing you out this once; do better. A cover-up: I know you’re not enough, but we’ll let it slide.
Accepting help was admitting these inadequacies, accepting that maybe I didn’t belong there, welcoming the shame that comes with being not enough. Accepting help was accepting that I couldn’t do it without someone else. It was admitting that someone had seen through my facade, someone knew my fortress walls were cracking, someone understood I was a fraud, faking it till I made it. Would I ever make it? Was it even possible to make it?
“Letting people help you is a way of letting them love you.” I can still picture Marcia as she said this, both of us sipping a warm drink at the Carpe Diem coffee shop in Canton. “Refusing to let people help you robs them of this ability to care about you and show their love.”
Marcia was one of my Communication and Honors professors at Malone. Her classes were designed to push you, bring you out of your comfort zone, make you think through why you did the things you did. She had a way of looking right through you, it felt like. But when she looked through the overwhelmed, overachieving college-aged Sparks, she didn’t see the fraud I thought I was. She saw someone to invest in, encourage, and build up.
Learning to let people help was one of the biggest lessons she worked on teaching me during my three years at Malone. I was overworked and under-rested, running on caffeine, dogged determination, and the intense need to prove I had it all under control: the three jobs, the homework, the hearing loss I was still trying to figure out.
This was one of the first times it sunk in that accepting help wasn’t necessarily the mark of shame I’d thought it was. We’d done a class on community and food, and I was beginning to see how it all worked, how people came together, how community could be a place of acceptance and support rather than judgement and scorecards. I will work on this, I thought to myself. I will learn how to be in community, learn how to accept help with grace and security. I can reframe this.
The next semester was COVID.
If you want a crash course on inadequacy and requiring help, try being hard-of-hearing in the midst of a global pandemic. Overnight it felt like all communication was cut off, everyone standing out of hearing range six feet away, their lips covered by cloth. It was as if society was suddenly designed with the express intent of cutting off communication between me and it, as if suddenly I was dropped into a foreign land without an interpreter.
“How are you doing?” Marcia asked me at the end of our first class back on campus. We were all six feet away and everyone’s lips were masked.
“I’m drowning,” I managed to whisper.
My “nice thought” of learning how to ask for help suddenly became survival. The idea of letting others love and support me was soured overnight. Instead of I can receive support, it became a grating can I do anything without relying on someone else?
And yet, I often steal the opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” to describe that last year at Malone. Because despite the struggling communication, drowning, and overwhelming semesters, I had a community around me, who reached out and encouraged me, supported me, helped me.
Life is such that it teaches you lessons over and over, reminding you of what you need to work on again and again. The trail, too. It doesn’t let you slip by unnoticed. It’s there to push you, challenge you, reveal you, change you.
Two days after my spoon broke, our fuel ran out. Again, it was two days until we’d get picked up by my parents and get a ride into town.
Stealth shook his fuel can. “I think if we’re careful, we can make it on mine,” he said. So all three of us carefully cooked dinner on his fuel, cold-soaked our oatmeals together, and made it into town.
The important thing: The three of us got there together, splitting fuel cans, spoons, and jokes. There were problems, but they were not faced alone.
My family picked up three hungry, suntanned hikers at the Settler’s Museum outside of Marion, and chucked us into showers as soon as possible. I got a new spoon, we got more fuel, and of course, we ate a boatload of food, stayed up way too late laughing together, and got to spend a wonderful Sunday catching up together.
A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 NLT
When I was planning this hike, one of my quiet goals was that the person who returned would not be the person who left. I wanted to learn the lessons that the trail would give me, integrate them into myself. I wanted the impact of the trail to reach much further than the hiking and adventures, fun memories and deep suntan. I wanted, and still want, the trail to be a catalyst.
I wasn’t expecting that I would have a tramily so intent on dismantling this core flaw, my resistance to help.
“You’re not hiking alone,” I was reminded recently. Whether it’s bear hangs, fuel, broken spoons, faulty air mattresses, running low on water, or anything else, they’re quick to remind me that “problems are not meant to be faced by yourself.” All I need to do is ask, or accept the offered help.
It still grates on my soul. It probably always will. This longing to be enough, this proving I belong is integrated into the fabric of my existence.
My friends and family are always going to be frustrated at my resistance to their offers of help, but when I do accept (which is more frequent now), I’m able to do so knowing the true purpose behind it: people who love me lovingly helping me. When I ask for help (which is a little easier now), I can do so with the understanding that it’s asking for support, not asking for a cover-up of my failings.
I am enough.
I do belong.
Take a deep breath, Sparks. You, too, from wherever you’re reading this. Take a deep breath. The world is not on your shoulders. There are people around you. You can give the burden away. You can be loved and supported by those around you. You’re not failing.
Take a deep breath. It’s okay.
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