The Steadfast Heart

Do you ever get the sense that the more you try to explain yourself, the more confusion you cause? I feel like I’ve created a lot of chaos lately. Funny enough, I thought I was leading myself through my relationships with the best of intentions. But perspective is humbling. Time brings understanding. Failure has something to say; something to teach.

The most perplexing thing for me now that I’m on the other side of these conversations is that so much prayer went into them. How could it all have gone so wrong? I thought I heard from God. I thought I laid it all on the altar. And maybe I did, and He’s allowing me feel exposed as a failure anyway. Maybe He knows how badly I need to sit at Jesus’s feet.

For that, I’m grateful. For quite some time, I’ve sensed I’ve needed recalibrated. But I fight being still. I feel more productive striving for perfection. There are small payoffs I can find in that. Validation, in any capacity from authority or familiar faces. It never lasts, but it is a scorecard for how I’m doing. Until I score poorly with people, like I’m conscious of now.

So if this is the Lord humbling me like I think He is, then I want to sit close to the throne of mercy. I know it will cost me my own immediate comfort. What I’m noticing is that when I get still, I find myself anxious. When I let myself get to resting heart rate, to really feel the freedom to be myself, I find reason to try harder. I think I’ve trained people how to value me by the way I rely so heavily on people’s approval. I feed off of people’s responses and their opinions of me and I navigate my way in the world from there. That results in vacillating between being too much and never enough. This isn’t new research I’m reporting on myself, but I think the urgency to surrender this to the King is greater.

So my takeaway question from feeling raw after conversations and experiencing the fallout from my decisions is: where am I placing my value? Where am I lacking inner peace and the ability to let Jesus overwrite my identity into His will?

The easy places to start identifying my overcompensation are at home and with my work. The people that love me have pointed out that I try way too hard. But when I stop trying, people outside of that circle have feedback for me to try harder. It’s a painful place to surrender my perceived need to be understood and valued for what I internally experience. It’s absolutely crushing on tough days like today.

And yet I’m grateful tonight to be poor in spirit. I feel a richness in the truth that when I am weak, Jesus lights a grace-filled path to fortitude. When I come up short in my marriage, motherhood, or my job, I can find His sufficiency at the end of every desperate prayer. He’s never abandoned me when I have a heart to build character. He shows up when I want to get better and not stay bitter. And that’s a generous starting point for underserving me.

There’s so much of me that wants to make my world smaller; to tighten up on the circle of trust that I keep. So I’m praying that the Lord will provide me with the accountability to use my life how He sees fit. To share the parts of my world with others if it means investing in His Kingdom. I want to live like James in the Bible who shared that we can count it all joy: every trial, all of the pain that’s part of the process.

I want to live a life that’s held steadfast by his love. A life held by His truth, to carry me through to the other side of what I need to learn through this. I’ve been listening to TAYA’s new album that came out this past week. Her voice has brought so many Hillsong soundtracks into churches and mainstream music. This new offering has not disappointed. One of the tracks I keep coming back to today is called “Jesus > Everything” and it’s been manna for me.

She sings,

Everything I have
Everything I’ve made
If it’s not Your will
Then strip it all away
Bind me to your heart
A tether that won’t break
And lead me to the cross
Where all else fades away
And it’s Jesus
Jesus over everything

Performed by TAYA, Written by Benjamin Hastings, Jason Ingram, Taya Gaukrodger, Produced by Jon Guerra, Jason Ingram

I want what she sings. Jesus over everything in my life. Praying that I will surrender myself over to Him again and again. Praying that for you, too.

Take care & take heart,