This past week my team and I spent a week living and working with Thai families in the small village of Mae Ai, in northern Thailand. And I won’t lie to you; it was a challenging week for me both physically and mentally. So much so that I had a breakdown the first day working in the rice fields (yeah kind of embarrassing, but I got over it).
So the tears initially came due to culture shock and missing home a whole lot, but then I just started thinking about my life in general, and just started yelling at God. To be honest, it felt kinda good.
Through that whole mess in the rice field, the Lord revealed to me a deep heart issue I still struggle with.
He managed to bring to light the fact that I still have an issue with performing for love and acceptance from both Him and other people. This need to perform comes from a mindset that I have to do things well and be a certain way in order to be worthy enough for people and God to like me.
Maybe this issue stems from a fear I have of being alone for a lot of my life. Or maybe it’s because I have always had a hard time trusting that people can actually love me and desire to pursue a relationship with me just because they like me. I don’t know. But I do know that I struggle with it.
And it’s not so much an issue that affects my mind as it is one that affects my heart. In my mind I understand that I am a beloved daughter of the King, but something went wrong when that reality was supposed to translate to my heart. So here I’ve been continuing to live as a slave to performance because my heart just doesn’t seem to get it.
So all I did was sit in this awareness all week without any solution on what to do about this problem of mine, because I was sick and tired of processing and trying to figure things out.
But then the Lord spoke. He reminded me through a book I was reading that I had to do nothing but sit and receive. Receive His love for me because that’s enough.
And that’s it. Once I can learn to truly receive love, I will be able to actually believe in my heart that I am lovable just for who I am and not for the version of myself that I have to work to be.
Though I still don’t quite have any of this figured out, I know it’s beautiful. And I’m ready to receive it.
“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).
