Turning Limits into Strengths
I am learning so many things about the way I am wired up. I hate the label of highly sensitive person-but unfortunately after reading the book I can’t fight the facts. So I have redefined it to make me feel better. I feel things much more strongly than the “normal” person does I think. I have so much empathy inside of me that anytime someone tells me a piece of their pain I enter into their world and swim around in it with them. I don’t own their pain or try to fix it. I walk with them in it – knowing that some small part of “being with” can help in healing.
I don’t know how to not feel other people’s pain with them and so my relational circle is fairly small. I give so much in myself to others that I can’t do that with too many people. Couple the empathy thing with my gifts of discernment and encouragement…and it makes for an emotionally charged environment in which I live daily. I can see past the layers of the pain people share with me and tap into the source so easily. I can read other’s faces. I can see why people are acting the way they are acting and speak truth in love into those situations. I can see the pain in their eyes and want to help take it away with words or actions of love and compassion. I want to in some very small way be the arms and words of Jesus for them.
I used to think there was something wrong with me because I never had a lot of friends. I am just not like everyone else and never found anyone who would love me back in the same way that I could love them. So I tried for years to change myself. I thought I scared people away with too much intensity. But in the last few years I have come to realize that God made me this way…and it is a gift to others. And no matter how hard I try- I can’t change it. And when I stop trying to get in the way by changing myself – He uses me to touch other people.
My capacity to love people is huge. I try to go out of my way to think of things that will help others. I spend the majority of my time thinking of others first. I can’t not do that. It is part of who I am. And I know that God made me that way for a reason.
I used to think all of these things about myself sucked. I did not ask to be this way and would be much more comfortable being someone else (and if I could choose it would be Jennifer Garner!). I would love to be able to have mindless conversations about nothing all day long - but frankly small talk bores the heck out of me. I would love to have a full social calendar - but because all of my interactions are usually soul searching conversations - I need to have a lot of alone time to refuel. I usedto think of all of these things about me as limits.
But God gave me these limits for a reason. And it is about time I acknowledged that fact and stopped the pity party.
So today I am choosing to embrace my limits. I will never be the life of the party. I will probably never have more than one or two close friends who really know me. I will probably always have a piece of my heart that feels lonely. But I will always have love and I will always choose to pour it out on others. That is what makes me feel alive because that is who God created me to be.
I don’t know how to not feel other people’s pain with them and so my relational circle is fairly small. I give so much in myself to others that I can’t do that with too many people. Couple the empathy thing with my gifts of discernment and encouragement…and it makes for an emotionally charged environment in which I live daily. I can see past the layers of the pain people share with me and tap into the source so easily. I can read other’s faces. I can see why people are acting the way they are acting and speak truth in love into those situations. I can see the pain in their eyes and want to help take it away with words or actions of love and compassion. I want to in some very small way be the arms and words of Jesus for them.
I used to think there was something wrong with me because I never had a lot of friends. I am just not like everyone else and never found anyone who would love me back in the same way that I could love them. So I tried for years to change myself. I thought I scared people away with too much intensity. But in the last few years I have come to realize that God made me this way…and it is a gift to others. And no matter how hard I try- I can’t change it. And when I stop trying to get in the way by changing myself – He uses me to touch other people.
My capacity to love people is huge. I try to go out of my way to think of things that will help others. I spend the majority of my time thinking of others first. I can’t not do that. It is part of who I am. And I know that God made me that way for a reason.
I used to think all of these things about myself sucked. I did not ask to be this way and would be much more comfortable being someone else (and if I could choose it would be Jennifer Garner!). I would love to be able to have mindless conversations about nothing all day long - but frankly small talk bores the heck out of me. I would love to have a full social calendar - but because all of my interactions are usually soul searching conversations - I need to have a lot of alone time to refuel. I usedto think of all of these things about me as limits.
But God gave me these limits for a reason. And it is about time I acknowledged that fact and stopped the pity party.
So today I am choosing to embrace my limits. I will never be the life of the party. I will probably never have more than one or two close friends who really know me. I will probably always have a piece of my heart that feels lonely. But I will always have love and I will always choose to pour it out on others. That is what makes me feel alive because that is who God created me to be.
posted by Amie at 6:48 PM
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