Help a Brother (or Sister) out!

Over at Andy's blog, I first saw an entry about questioning what you're going through because of all of the difficulties in your life. Check it out. It links to another blog post on one of his friend's blogs, and you can either follow the link train, or just check it out here. I guess this blog post is kind of part three in this series.

We all know that sometimes life is hell. Andy saw that, and it's true, but you still keep making your way through all of it. Will, Andy's friend, has been working hard at trying to make the church he is in better, and that's very hard too.

I guess what I really want to say here is to help out. Help out groups you're in, help out your church, your sports team, your business group, anything. Help out the people in charge, because while they may seem like they're totally in control and invincible, secretly, like Andy and Will, they're really having a difficult time.

I'm the webmaster of a pro-life club here on campus, and because of that, I go to the board meetings we have to plan stuff. My friend Randi, she is the president of the club, and this is pretty much the first big leadership position she's had. I knew she was nervous and scared, but she's been doing a really good job with everything in the club, especially considering that she and the rest of the board are practically rebuilding the club from scratch.

We had a board meeting on Wednesday, and Randi said she wanted to see all of the board members after the meeting (some people from the Catholic club on campus were there as well). I figured she just wanted to talk to us alone to discuss the influence the Catholic club was having on us (it's a secular pro-life club, so we can't really be overtly supporting one religion). She had a much more pressing issue to discuss.

My friend Randi had gone through two panic attacks over the past few days over everything she had been worrying about for being president, not to mention all the pressures of just being a college student. She really just wanted to know that if she decided to resign, that someone else would step up and take her place. We all pretty much told her that the club would definitely be in good hands if she decided to resign, and that if she felt like she had too much work, she should have told us. We would have helped more if she needed it. Heck, as the webmaster, I do almost nothing. I easily could help a lot more, and I told her that.

Leaders aren't invulnerable. They need help too, but more importantly, they need to know that there are people available to help, people they can call on. So even if you just tell someone that you'd be willing to help with events in the future, that'd be quite a burden off of their backs.