Our greatest strengths are so often the set-up for our greatest downfalls. It is that which drives us that also has the potential to drive us into the ground. The things that fire us up reduce us to ashes. That which is my personal spice for life wrecks the whole pot of sauce. It goes on and on.
It took me a long time to figure out my greatest strength, my driving force, my fire, my spice...and with the realization came such an enlightening moment of clarity. Passion. About what? Half the time I have no idea! But anything I care about at all, I care about with such a huge part of myself that, soon enough, I cannot see where it ends and I begin. I just get fired up and it consumes me. That is why I have to be so careful what I care about.
When I look back over the last several years and see the disaster zone that was my personal minefield of relationships, it's not hard to see why it was so harmful and toxic. I come to care for someone, really care, and it consumes me. It's who I am. That isn't to say that I cannot separate myself from someone, or that it in any way turns into an obsession. Not by a long shot. But I commit; I commit to making something work and then I am driven to make this thing last. I kill myself with my greatest attribute.
Ministry is like that for me. Right now I am staring down the barrel of a new gun and it terrifies me. It becomes such an integral part of my life and then, if it ends, a part of me dies with it. I want to be a woman so consumed with ministry that I cannot focus on any other future plans until it is the right time. But how? How in the world do I give myself to something when I know that its flames will take me down?
People say I have strong, even brutal, opinions. I make no apologies for these opinions, only for the coldness of my delivery at times. I do not go in something half way. I do not coast my way through anything. Even in the midst of depression, I sink into it with all the weight I can throw. It's sadistic and, well, dark and twisty. Yet here I stand, with my all in everything I do, and that has to be okay. I may wreck everything by throwing all my chilies in one pot, but no one can say I held back.
Dilemma. If this strength is what is killing me, do I cut it loose (and in the process lose an integral part of what makes me who I am) or run the huge risk of burying myself alive with all this over-zealous shoveling? The shovel feels right in my hand. And even on days when I hate who I am...I love who I am. I love the person who makes me so detestable and so very wonderful in the same breath. I am struggling right now with trying to suppress who I am to please others. These are the others who count. I need to stay in school, remember? I need to go on tour. I need to live out this aspect of my calling. But. Oh, the hugest of buts! I need to live! I need to breathe in air and breathe out something extraordinary. To reign that in is to not be true to who He has made me to be. I cannot take that lightly anymore. The calling on my life is so far beyond settling above mediocre; settling does not compute in my existential life quota.
If I do not let the flames spread to everything I do and everyone I touch, it will consume me from the inside out. I thought the walking dead was bad; burning alive is so much worse.
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