A college student named Liz Skiles balanced a dozen spinning plates at once. She hosted a freshmen’s Bible study, helped lead weekly prayer times, worked on the school janitorial crew, played intramural sports, discipled girls one-on-one, kept up dozens of friendships, and organized the children’s ministry at her church, on top of scoring A’s in 6 classes each semester.
Staying busy made her feel needed, appreciated and even loved. If she could have done more, she would have. Isn’t that why we’re here, she thought. To do as much for God as we possibly can? Not wasting a single moment?
She helped everyone. She fixed everything. A poster child good girl. But she ignored her own needs and she believed she could only be happy by making an impact for Jesus. By her own definition, of course.
And when you give all you have, to the extreme, you burn out. You can’t last when you ignore your health, your rest, and ultimately, your heart.
God created us with a deep-seated need: to know we belong. We are meant to be nurtured by two loving parents who show us God’s love so we can enjoy belonging to him. It’s a beautiful design.
But the enemy steals that comfort from us, sometimes starting even before we are born. He convinces us God doesn’t love us the way we are. He started with Eve in the garden, and has never stopped. He may rip away the security our parents should give us. He’ll make us feel responsible for what isn’t ours to carry as children. He drives words like arrows from our teen years into our hearts to fester like poison. We feel alone.
Our mother Eve ran away from God. She tried hiding her shame after she sinned, and desperately covered her naked self with leaves to prove she was still okay.
God found her, and proved he still accepted her, even with sin staining her perfection. He went so far as to tell her that he would use her and her daughters to bring a Savior into the world to rescue all of humankind. Even after what she’d done.
It’s been 8 years since I graduated from college. Eve’s story reminds me of how God stepped into my life. Even when I was Busy Lizzie I would pray, “God, do whatever you want with my life. I’m yours.” To answer that prayer, God wouldn’t leave me desperately pleasing and helping and fixing everyone and everything. He stopped me. He stripped off the layer of comfort I felt in fixing people when my best friends pointed out my issues. And for the first time in my life, I started seeing how much I needed Jesus.
The past 8 years have been my awakening. The world doesn’t need me, after all. It needs Jesus. And I don’t need to belong in the world. I belong to Jesus.
I’m 33 this year. My oldest is 7 years old. Recently I met another woman exactly my age who has teenagers. It got me thinking about the variety of lives in the women I know in their 30s. Some married, some divorced, some single. New moms, moms with elementary kids, moms with teenagers, or not moms at all. Women working full time in church ministry. Women working everywhere else. Women who try to fit in. Women who break the mold.
Each woman precious and beautiful and broken in our own ways, no matter our age. Other than our gender, we may not look much alike. What ties us together?
We all want to belong.
We all need Jesus.
Like Eve, God lets us realize how naked we are. Without him, we ache for safety. We desperately need the hand he reaches out to us.
Our daily needs may look so different from each other – one woman worries about paying the rent while the other frets over her child’s education – but our deepest need is the same. We all ask, “Do I really belong?”
And God’s Spirit says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come.” If we are thirsty to know God, we qualify. We don’t have to measure up, clean up or suck up. We just come. We grab onto God’s hand. That’s faith. “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” Galatians 3:28 says. “You belong to Christ.”
We find belonging in Jesus. He welcomes us, and all our needs, with his whole heart.
Once God meets our need to belong, we begin to trust him to care for us in every other way. Healing begins. We step out in freedom. We serve others because we are loved, not because we need to feel like it. Every one of us, every stage of life, every situation under the sun, matters because we exist. Because God values us.
You matter. You are welcome here. You belong.