I Dug the Hole. He's Filling It In.

If you know me, you know that for months now, I've been talking about this great void within me. It’s an emptiness that I haven’t been able to fill no matter how hard I've tried. I thought that the gap was there because I missed my best friends and some of the stronger relationships in my life which are now gone.

But I don’t think that’s the case.

I think instead, that it’s been quite the opposite. After I lost my boyfriend earlier this year, I also lost his family. They had become my family here, and they were also my closest friends. Without them, I felt lost. Ever since then, I've tried to replace them in my heart with as many friends as I could find. But it didn't work.

 

You see, the problem was that I thought the void needed to be filled with people, when actually, it was the way I was trying to fill the void that was causing it to grow larger and larger. Ensuring that I had friendships, a network of people close to me, had become almost an obsessive goal in my life. Suddenly instead of just enjoying the company of those around me, and spending time with them when our schedules allowed, I was trying too hard. I was reaching out to people for more than they could give, and was expecting them to be things to me that they couldn't be.

I had subliminally told myself that I was nothing without friends, that I couldn't live my life without a string of close relationships. I’m a very relationship-centered person, so this made sense to me. But it was a lie. I realize that in trying so hard to surround myself with people, I had almost made it my god. It was what I cared about most in life, something that I was determined to obtain. God had once again been pushed to the side and replaced with a lesser, worldly god.

Earlier this week, God sort of spoke to my heart, and suddenly, I realized why I had this gaping hole inside of me. I had created it by not being satisfied in my life the way it was. I had created the gap when I took my life out of God’s hands and into my own, thus telling him, “You can’t take care of me as I can take care of me. Let me handle this.”

Needless to say, the stress of trying to make my own life “perfect,” was slowly killing me, and it took the form of that gaping emptiness. Since I've realized what I was doing, I’m going to try to keep surrendering my life to Him. Each time I do this, I realize that the emptiness inside of me kind of goes away. Now, I’m not saying that I’m eliminating my friendships or that I’m not going to work on them. Nothing has changed between me and the people in my life except for the fact that I’m done stressing over and trying to control all of my relationships. I’m going to leave that in God’s hands.

Will I try to take the reins back? Probably at some point. But, let me tell you, I feel much more like a whole person when He is in charge, instead of me.