Month: April 2021

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To begin again…

I was 27 and didn’t know how to cope. I thought my life should revolve around pleasing others, but I was never good enough. I could never be enough. Finally I had a breakdown. Sure, I acknowledged that God was all-loving. I agreed that he had created me unique and beautiful, but I didn’t know how to live it.

All pretending stopped as I lay there shivering on my bed. I could no longer be strong, brave, or even good. It was just me and God, and to my astonishment, he still loved me. And he came to me, just as he has come to millions of others, “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 63:1). I would live again.

Six months later I went back to work, and it took another three years to recover, but, I finally knew who I was – BELOVED.

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When do I help?

We instinctively respond to someone in distress. It is natural. But what if it’s someone with a demand or an unmet expectation, and they want us to fulfil it?

On occasion people have cried, “I want this and that, and you have to do it.” And because of their insistence, I forgot about God’s voice in my life. Through unthinking compassion, I lost my way.

I have learned the hard way that blind compassion hinders them and me. It’s my responsibility to not instantly respond. Three times the Bible says, “Do not be hasty…”* And even though it might be hard to stand still in the face of another’s strong emotions, we owe it to ourselves and God to pause and think. There might be another way.

*1 Timothy 5:22; Ecclesiastes 5:2; Proverbs 19:2

Photo by Shwa Hall on Unsplash