I've long prided myself in being a "middle maintenance" girl. Meaning I don't mind camping occasionally … as long as there are toilets that flush somewhere in the vicinity. Meaning I don't have an entire closet dedicated to my shoe collection, but I don't mind having a few strappy and utterly impractical pairs in the mix either.

So last week when I was bombarded by events that made me feel ultra high maintenance, it caused me a bit of panic (to say nothing of my wounded pride).

It all started with my carpet. After years of placing rugs in strategic locations all over my living room, I was finally getting new carpet installed. But Mitch the Carpet Guy told me the installers would not, under any circumstances, move my furniture—sorry, union rules. So, like any savvy single woman, I started calling my friends with muscles (or husbands).

My timing must have been bad, though, because everyone on the list had other plans or thrown-out backs that day. Which left only my dad and me to move my couch, my table, that ridiculously heavy credenza I refuse to part with, and everything else I've managed to accumulate over the past five years. I was grateful for Dad's assistance, but I couldn't help feeling some amount of single-girl angst: What if I had a real emergency someday and no one was available to help me?

Just a day later, my illusion of independence crumbled even further when I went to start my car. I turned the key and … nothing. Now, as much as I've tried to learn basic car maintenance, my only real area of specialty is adding windshield wiper fluid, and that didn't seem to be the problem in this case. So I was stuck (quite literally).

For the second time in two days, I found myself staring at the contact list on my phone, trying to figure out who would be least inconvenienced by a call from a stranded motorist—or more accurately, a homebound motorist. Thankfully, I found someone who was willing to help me, and the repair was minor (my diagnosis was right: it wasn't the windshield wiper fluid). But mixed in with my gratitude at having wheels again was a certain sense of indebtedness. I couldn't shake my feeling of guilt that once again I'd needed to be bailed out. And what could I offer in return? Anything I thought of seemed sorely inadequate.

I tend to be one of those people who are more comfortable giving in relationships. So when I have no choice but to be on the receiving end, it makes me squirm. I know love doesn't keep a record of wrongs (or last-minute jump starts), but all the same, I balk at feeling as if I owe someone.

Besides, if I'm really honest with myself, it's not just the sense of physical dependence on others that bothers me. It's also the fear of being emotionally high maintenance. What if I have one of those days when I feel like I've been run over by a Mack truck and no one is What if there's no one to push my wheelchair and buy Depends for me when I'm old?

As I wrestle with my fear of being a burden, though, it occurs to me that maybe the very thing that makes me feel high maintenance—my single-woman status—might be what enables me to be there for my community in ways I wouldn't be able to otherwise. I may not be able to change my friends' tires for them, but I can go to their house at the last minute to watch their kids in an emergency. I can use my vacation days to help a nonprofit organization in a third-world country. I can get involved somewhere in the evening without fear of interfering with the family dinner.

So I suppose when it comes down to it, I am high maintenance. But then again, in one way or another, maybe we're all high maintenance. And perhaps that's not such a bad thing. In fact, that very well may be how God planned it all along, so we'd have to acknowledge our need for each other and our need to live interdependently. The apostle Paul puts it this way: "We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other" (Romans 12:5).

If we could do everything on our own and fly solo as fully functioning individuals, we'd never become the body of Christ we were intended to be. And there's the upside to our high-maintenance tendencies: They serve as God's reminders of our need for community and, ultimately, our need for him. And that's true whether we're male or female, young or old, married or single, car mechanic or otherwise.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to pull out my contact list again. I think I could use a little assistance with the enormous spider camping out behind my couch.

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