A Yo-Yo

This original post was posted on my Facebook page on August 23, 2015


There are times I feel like a yo-yo. God has given me a tender and compassionate heart. I've known that for a long time. For the longest time, I fought it because with a tender heart, you tend to experience more pain and brokenness, and not just your own. When other people are hurting, you hurt, but on the flip side when other people are rejoicing, so do you.

A couple years ago I went on a mission trip to Mexico. While I was there I realized that my heart had become cold and calloused. It bothered me. I asked some friends to pray for me that my heart would be softened. Within a couple days or less, I could feel God softening my heart. I have come to realize over the past couple years that it's only when I focus on God that my heart will remain soft. I still find myself getting hardened a lot. I admit it. I'll be going about my day, thinking it's going well, and then something happens, and my reaction is not what it should be. I admit that there are times when my reaction to bad things happening to others is that they deserved it, and I do NOT like that reaction. That is NOT how somebody who follows Christ should feel. Jesus never felt that way about anybody. Why should I? My pride gets in the way a lot. A lot of people don't realize that about me because I usually keep my mouth shut, but if they knew what was going on in my mind.... They probably wouldn't like me very well. I struggle with this a lot. Sometimes it's daily and sometimes it is minute by minute. God revealed something to me awhile back, and I have felt for awhile that I should share it.

As many of you know, I was in a car accident when I was 13. I ended up with a lot of scars. I was laying in bed one night, when I noticed one of the scars on my arm. I felt God telling me basically that scars are a sign that you have healed. Scars are soft and sensitive. Mine are more sensitive than the rest of my skin, and I imagine that's the way it is for all people. He explained to me that scars are a way to know something healed properly. When we are hurt emotionally and mentally, scars are a way to remind us that we are healed. Maybe that means that we were able to forgive someone, etc, but we are still healed, we are still soft and not hardened. We still FEEL. 

Now, callouses on the other hand are hard, and you can't really feel much through them. They come from constant friction against your skin. They are your body's way of protecting what is underneath. It is so easy for us to become calloused by things going on around us and to us, but God doesn't want us to be calloused, He wants us to be soft and moldable. He wants us to feel what He feels. I look at my scars, inside and out, and I see what God has brought me through. I have experienced a lot of pain, physically, emotionally, mentally... But God has brought me through all of that, and I am a better person now because of all that, and I know God has a purpose for my life.

Jesus, make me more like You. Continue to make my heart more like Yours. Break my heart for what breaks Yours. Open my eyes to the pain that these people feel; the ones that I judge and have hardened my heart to. Give me compassion for those that are not easy to love. I pray that I will look past their outward appearance and see their hearts and the hurt that they feel. I pray that I will be a light in the darkness, that when people see me, they are drawn to you, Father. Break me, Father; break away all of my pride. Amen.