This Is What It Looks Like Today

Man alive....today was one stressful thing after another.....and crazy enough, not one thing was about me, either.

It was phone call after phone call, problem after problem, trying to help sort out situations that belonged to everyone else. It's now almost 8pm, and here I sit, not a single thing that I needed to get done today....got done. Every responsibility of mine got pushed aside while I tended to everyone else's.

Then there's last night...ugh. After what I saw, heard, and what I felt spiritually...I drove home wanting to just walk away from everything.

But it's not because I don't love God. It's because sometimes the weight of the battle, the attack, the constant pressure of carrying things, makes you wonder how much more you're supposed to keep carrying.

And today, if I'm being completely raw, I sat here more convinced than ever that maybe I'm just done opening up to people.

Like...done confiding, done explaining...done letting people into the places that are vulnerable. Because somehow, little pieces of things you've trusted someone with have a way of making their way into conversations you never gave permission for them to be in. Or someone even mentions, "I heard so and so talking about it." I don't know.....maybe they don't think it's a big deal. But when it's not theirs to tell in the first place, it certainly changes how I see them. It makes you start questioning who is actually safe to talk to, yannow?

And then......there's the pain of watching someone you love make a genuine effort to step outside of their comfort zone, put themselves out there, and try to connect with people again...only to be made to feel invisible in the middle of doing it.

Watching someone finally work up the courage to engage, only to have another person completely disregard their presence and step in between them, hurts in a way that's hard to explain when you know how much effort it took for them to even try.

And maybe one of the hardest parts is knowing I can't even bring it up to the people involved. I've been down that road before. I've tried addressing things I've witnessed with my own eyes or heard with my own ears, only to have it dismissed or explained away because apparently I "didn't see everything."

There comes a point where you just get tired of defending what you know you saw or heard.

So yeah...today has been a lot. And THAT is a complete understatement. 

Spiritual warfare isn't just a phrase you throw around...sometimes it's suffocating. Sometimes it hits so hard that everything in you wants to disappear, be quiet, shut everybody out, and walk away.

I'm not writing this because I'm looking for encouragement or sympathy. I'm writing it because this is the part that people don't usually talk about.

The part where you're tired of being strong, tired of carrying everybody else's stuff, tired of wondering who you can actually trust. The part where something small can hurt deeply because you're already carrying too much.

Some days obedience is beautiful.....some days it hurts..... and today...this is simply what it looks like.

Not every day is victory songs and mountain-top moments. Sometimes it's carrying the weight, fighting the battle in your mind, and wondering if you have anything left to give.

I know this won't last forever.

But that doesn't make today any less real.