I woke up late for church this week — missed the worship, caught the word right on time, the way it always seems to work out when I need it most. And what came through the message cracked something open I’ve been circling around for years without ever naming it out loud.
The Two Ditches
The word that day was about community, and about two ways people miss it. On one side, the ditch of isolation — “it’s just me and God, I don’t need people.” On the other, the ditch of over-giving without discernment — hurt people who’ve become people-pleasers, handing out “all” to anyone who’ll take it, no boundaries, no wisdom about who’s actually safe to pour into.
I sat with that and had to be honest: I’ve lived in both ditches. Not at the same time, but across different seasons. I grew up feeling like an only child even though I have siblings — different homes, different lives, too much distance and too much history for closeness to come easy. I’ve craved community for as long as I can remember. And I’ve also, at different points, tried to be liked by everyone, giving without checking whether it was wise, and getting taken advantage of more than once because I wasn’t discerning about where my “yes” landed.
Here’s what felt different this time, though: I could name both ditches as places I’ve been, without claiming either one as who I am today. That’s not denial. That’s agreement with truth instead of agreement with my history.
🪨 A Stone Laid Down
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 — “Two are better than one… for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.”
Hebrews 10:24-25 — “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together… provoking one another to love and to good works.”
1 Peter 4:10 — “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another.”
A prayer over this stone: Lord, You’ve shown me the two ditches I’ve stood in — the one where I convinced myself I didn’t need anyone, and the one where I gave myself away with no discernment at all. Neither one was Your plan for me. Teach me the narrow road between them: open-handed, but wise. Connected, but not desperate. Amen.
Choosing Truth Over Feeling
The same message touched on the Holy Spirit — how believers sometimes wait for a feeling before they’ll believe something is real. I know that one intimately. I’ve spent time comparing my own walk to other people’s testimonies, the dramatic ones, the ones that sound like an earthquake, and quietly wondering why mine didn’t shake the same way.
What I’m learning now is that faith isn’t the feeling. Faith is the choice to stand on what God said is true about me, about Him, even on the days nothing in me feels it. Not denying the questions or the doubt — just refusing to let them be the deciding vote.
Seeing What Was There All Along
Something happened this week that I didn’t expect. A friend, in an offhand comment, called me one of the most giving people she knows. And it stopped me, because I have never once thought of myself that way. I look at my own flaws first, almost by default. But when she said it, a whole string of memories came back — dubbing mixtapes clean of commercials so a friend could have just the music, writing love letters for people who couldn’t find their own words, showing up with exactly what someone needed before they’d even asked.
I sat with that and realized: God has been using this in me for a very long time, long before I had language for it, long before there was an altar to lay any of it on. Sometimes the people around us can see what God’s been doing in us more clearly than we can see it ourselves — partly humility, partly just how hard it is to see your own reflection in a moving current.
And right behind that realization came something less comfortable: the urge to hide. To whom much is given, much is required. That verse landed heavy, and my first instinct was to want to disappear rather than carry what it implies. But I’m not running. I’m naming it, sitting with it, and letting it be true instead of shrinking it down to something smaller and safer.
🪨 A Stone Laid Down
Luke 12:48 — “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.”
Ephesians 2:10 — “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Psalm 139:14 — “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
A prayer over this stone: Lord, I want to hide from what You’ve shown me is true about how You’ve used me. It feels safer to stay small. But You didn’t make me to disappear — You made me on purpose, with this exact heart, for this exact reason. Help me carry what’s required without running from it. Amen.
Carrying Hope and Hard News in the Same Hand
This week also brought harder things — news about a loved one’s health that isn’t moving in the direction I’d hoped, and a conversation with someone close to me who’s in real pain over a relationship she’s finally seeing clearly for what it is. I found myself holding both at once: praying boldly for full recovery in one situation, while also quietly preparing my heart for a different outcome; speaking hard truth in love to someone I care about, without either softening it into nothing or saying it without gentleness.
I don’t have a neat resolution for either one yet. What I have is the practice this whole season has been building in me: bringing it honestly to God instead of managing it alone in my head, and trusting Him with the timeline I can’t control from where I’m standing.
Building Toward Presence, Not Just Posts
All of this — the two ditches, the giving I didn’t know I was doing, the hard family news — keeps pointing me toward the same conviction: I don’t want to build something that only exists behind a screen. Social media can be a door people walk through, but it was never meant to be the room they live in. My prayer is for this to become something people experience in real rooms, real gatherings, real presence — not just another feed to scroll.
I’m still one voice in the crowd, not a figure over it. But I’m learning that being a voice in the crowd doesn’t mean staying invisible. It means showing up, honestly, and trusting God with what people do with what I bring.
If you’ve ever stood in one of those two ditches — isolation on one side, over-giving on the other — I’d love to hear where you’ve found yourself. You’re not the only one still finding the narrow road between them.