There are moments when I mess up and I know it’s me. I know I need to humbly seek forgiveness and I must sit-up and take-note of the lesson.
I’m seriously broken on so many levels. God has made some amazing leeway on me yet we still have a ways to go. I think I might be in first grade.
But here’s the flip-side: I’ve gotten pretty adept at identifying when someone is asking me to carry their baggage.
There are just some things we aren’t able to do as mere mortals. We can’t live a life without sin. We can’t walk on water. And we certainly can’t fill a hole that’s only meant for God to fill.
Expectations can be a scary business. They convolute our thinking until we begin to see the world through a lens in which no one will measure-up.
It’s only when we hear the still small voice nudging us to explore this brokenness that’s impacting our relationships with others that we begin a new process of healing.
Because when our own sin starts to spill over to the lives of others and we force them to pick-up our suitcases, we build up walls. We create friends who are there out of fear and guilt. We do the very thing we don’t want to do: we alienate.
And if we are on the other side of this, if we are the ones being alienated, it’s a hard spot. We want to love with a love that’s of Jesus but we also want to stand firm in the truth of not allowing someone else’s sin to invade our lives to the point in which we walk on eggshells.
Our emotions are so very unreliable. Our heart can be our wisest guide and our most fickle enemy, all at the same time.
When we act on emotion without first taking it up with God, we can do some serious damage. We can place stuff on others that was never meant for them to carry.
And on the flip side, if you are being dumped upon, I think it’s fair to say your own bags can be heavy enough, eh?
My brokenness is between God and me. Just the two of us. (Cue the Will Smith song) But so help me if it starts to spill-out to the ones I love the most because then MY sin becomes THEIR sin to carry and their arms are already so full.
It’s not that we won’t walk through hard stuff with people because so many of us will and do each day. It’s more that we can get to the point when the humility piece is missing and it’s a constant battle of what YOU are not doing instead of recognizing what HE can do for YOU.
It’s trying to fit you into a hole that only God can fulfill.
And He’s dying, literally, to be the one to do it.
Thanks for the mention, Natalie. I love where you took the idea.