This Place

What if I told you that in the midst of my glee and cheering for others, I am overwhelmed by the current state of my own reality? You see, at my core I am a server and a giver. I have always been that way. One of the ones who would give you the shirt off her back. Still, my life has not disappointed me in the area of hurt. And sadly, my penchant for giving people the benefit of the doubt rather than believing my own eye's, I have found myself bamboozled by my compassion and empathy.

Most often, I am giving what I have from my barely enough, and often from not enough. But who would know? God loves a cheerful giver, and I am dead set on providing palpable joy. Still, my sobering reality is that I am doing so while it feels as though the walls are closing in on me.

What do you do when what God has shown you is not what you are facing? The Word reminds us to stand.

But what happens when the weight is seemingly overtaking you? When you can no longer catch your footing? When you come face to face with just how often you have been to others what they refuse to be to you?

All of this can suck the wind out of you.

I have had a habit of shutting down. I even claim to check out, only to make my way back out at the mere sound of someone else’s agony. Not once my own is gone, but while I am still in the midst of it.

It has been said, both by myself and by others, that if God never does anything else, He has already done enough. And though that may be true, I refuse to aire on the side of legalistic—for good, bad or indifferent. I am unapologetically authentic, which means as I sit here weighing what I believe are God-given revelations, hoping for my God-ordained manifestations, things are not adding up, and sometimes I'm overcome with disappointment. Friend, I want my stuff. I want everything God has for me. Everything!

So, the question I ask myself today is this: how often did I give away what I had been praying for? How often did I frame my service as an act unto God when in fact it was an act of self-sabotage? How many lessons were others supposed to learn that I disobediently circumvented?

How many times did I step in where God intended for someone else to stand? How many times did I interrupt someone else’s process because my heart could not tolerate watching them struggle?

And somewhere between compassion and obedience, between generosity and wisdom, I now find myself taking inventory.

Because there is a difference between being called to serve and being unwilling to let God be God.

So today I sit with the weight of that realization.

Not defeated.

Not bitter.

But honest.

Honest enough to admit that sometimes the place God brings you to is not just about endurance. Sometimes it is about revelation.

Revelation about where you have overextended yourself.

Revelation about where your compassion became compromise.

Revelation about where your giving quietly crossed the line into depletion.

And perhaps that is why seasons of isolation and wilderness are not always punishments like we sometimes believe.

Sometimes they are protection.

Sometimes God pulls you away so the noise of everyone else’s needs no longer drowns out His will. Sometimes the wilderness becomes the place where He teaches you what is yours to carry and what never belonged to you in the first place.

In the wilderness, you learn boundaries.

In the wilderness, you learn obedience.

In the wilderness, you learn that even the most compassionate heart must still surrender control to God.

And when that realization settles in, there is only one way to describe it.

This place.