I Make a Lousy Living Sacrifice

I have been staring at a blank screen.

My friends are telling me to write.

God is telling me to write.

So, I sit.
And I stare.
The blank screen glares back at me.
The keyboard taunts me.
The challenge in my head plays over and over again
As day after day I sit and stare at the bright white in front me.

Wordless.

It's not right. 
This dilemma from the woman I thought that I was.
I am supposed to have wisdom and insight and encouragement and strength.

Lately I have felt the complete opposite of everything listed above.
Foolish.  Thoughtless.  Discouraged.  Weak.

One thing happened late last week that began to stir something inside of me again.
Just one little thing.
One little, big, simple yet life altering moment.

I, yet again, broke and finally acknowledged that this life and journey is not about me.

Lately I've really, I mean really, struggled with that.
And was in complete denial.

Instead, I dove head-first into my never-ending well of hurts and frustrations
Wrapping them around me like a familiar, warm blanket from which I could not seem to break free.
The problem with that blanket is that it has holes in it.
Big ones.
And it's itchy. And scratchy.
So, I would just readjust myself and shift positions, never shedding the comfort or familiarity of curling up in my sorrows.

I plan to address some of those sorrows, because I think some of you can relate and need encouragement in the midst of the hurt and abandonment and reality of being thrust into a leper colony not of your choosing.
But today's post is not about that.
Today is about the decision to step out of the uncomfortable familiar.
To break free.

A few years ago I had a revelation:
I am never happy when I am focused on myself.
It is a challenge daily to lay myself upon the altar.
It would be easy if people were always nice and helpful, encouraging and apologetic.
But they're not.
People can be thoughtless and mean.  Selfish and cruel.
And it is hard to put them first when my heart is still mending.

Here's a realization: My heart will forever be mending.
There will never come a day when I will say "I am healed" and feel pain no more.
Because compassion comes with a price: heartache.

God tells me to love people anyway.

After all, He loved me at my absolute worst.
When hope was lost.
When all had vanished.
I had nothing to offer Him.
Nothing.
He scooped me up in His amazingly powerful arms and held me, never to let me go.

How could I not turn around and love His most prized creation out of the never ending well of His Love and Compassion for me?

When I don't, it's because I forget that:

HE is enough.
He IS enough.
He is ENOUGH.

Him.
It is ALL and ONLY about HIM.

And that, dear friends, is when I remember

I remember
I remember

That I can lay:
My hurts
My pain
My desires
My plans
My dreams
My Life
on the altar
because He already made the real sacrifice.

I have no right to make any moment of my life about me.
If I am still standing...
And I am...
It is for one purpose and one purpose only.

Not to dwell on me.

To point to Him.