Capacity

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And welcome to Gentle Hours. I hope this morning has been kind to you. If it hasn't, I'm grateful that you still made your way here because sometimes the hardest part of beginning a new week is finding a few quiet moments before the world starts asking things of us. And maybe you've already been up for a while, maybe you're still wrapped up in your blanket trying to convince yourself to keep moving. Or maybe you're on your way to work listening as the sun begins to make its way across the sky. However, this moment finds you, I just want you to know that for the next little while there is nowhere else you have to be and nothing you have to prove. Before we get into our word for this week, let's do what we always do. Let's give ourselves permission to be here. And if you're driving, please keep your eyes on the road. But if you're somewhere you can settle in, I want you to loosen your shoulders just a little. Relax your forehead, unclench your jaw because so many of us carry stress there without even realizing it. Let your hands rest wherever they naturally fall and allow yourself to become aware of your breathing instead of rushing past it. Now I want you to take a slow deep breath in through your nose. Hold it gently. Now release it slowly through your mouth. Again, breathe in. Hold it. Now let it go. There is enough grace for today. There is enough strength for today. You don't have to borrow tomorrow's words before you've even lived through this Monday now. Let's talk about our word for this week: capacity. And I don't know why this word has been sitting with me lately, but I think it's because so many of us have become so accustomed to asking ourselves what we're really capable of that we've forgotten to ask ourselves, or we actually have the capacity to carry. And those are different questions. And I think confusing the two is the reason so many good people end up very exhausted. Just because you are capable of doing something doesn't always mean you have the capacity to do it. And I wish more of us understood that before we stretch ourselves so thin, trying to be everything for everybody. I think somewhere along the way we started believing that being dependable meant always saying yes. That being loving meant always making room, and that being a good person meant finding a way to carry one more responsibility, even when our hands were already full. The problem with living like that is eventually, you know, you stop noticing how much you're caring because you become so used to surviving underneath the weight of what is heavy, and that begins to feel normal for you. Then one day something small happens. Somebody says one little thing, you know, one more responsibility gets placed on your shoulders, and you begin to see how irritated or emotional you begin to be over something that normally wouldn't bother you. It isn't always because that one thing was so heavy. Sometimes it's because it was placed on top of everything else that you've been pretending wasn't weighing you down. And I think the older that we have gotten, the more we realize that capacity isn't something that you decide one more time and carry it with you for the rest of your life. It changes, my baby. It changes after you've buried people you never imagined living without. It changes after you've been disappointed enough times that your heart starts moving a little slower before it opens back up. It changes when you're raising children, caring for aging parents, you know, building a business, healing from something you never told anybody about, or simply trying to become a healthier version of yourself. All of those things require something from you. And even though nobody can always see what you're carrying, it doesn't mean that you are not carrying it. And I also think that we get ourselves in trouble because we keep measuring today's strength against yesterday's capacity. We remember a season when we could answer every phone call, show up to every event, be everyone's listening ear, solve everyone's problems, work long hours, stay up late, you know, wake up early and somehow, you know, still have enough left for ourselves. And then life happened. And then we grew and we changed. We learned very hard lessons, we began protecting our peace a little more than we used to. But instead of honoring these changes, we started criticizing ourselves for not being who we used to be. I want to remind you that you are not required to remain the version of yourself that was just merely surviving. Sometimes we hold ourselves hostage to an old expectation because people become comfortable with the version of us that never said no. They become familiar with the version of us that always figured it out, you know, always showed up, always answered, always sacrificed, you know, it was available. And because they benefited from that version of us, they don't always understand the version that's learned to pause before saying a complete yes. Wisdom will make you pause. Peace will make you pause. And it's not that you're selfish, but because you finally started asking yourself a question that you should have been asking yourself a long time ago. Do I actually have room for any of this? My baby, have you ever had a conversation that lasts in about 15 minutes where by the time you hung up, you felt like you needed to lie down? Sometimes, you know, people have a way of placing their entire emotional world into your lap and walking away, feeling lighter while you're left, trying to sort through everything that life handed you. Then they thank you for listening. And you're grateful that they trusted you, but nobody ever stops to ask what that conversation cost you and that's capacity. There are some rooms you walk into and immediately feel yourself becoming tired. And there are other rooms where you leave feeling like you can breathe again. There are some relationships that pour into you, and there are others that only know how to pull from you. There are some responsibilities that give you life purpose, and there are others that quietly become, you know, obligations that you never agreed to carry because you've already carried them for so long, and everybody assumes that you're okay with all of the weight. You know, I wonder how many of us have become so familiar with carrying things that we no longer notice that we are tired. We don't stop because we're exhausted. We are stopping simply because our body eventually makes a decision for us. We can get sick, we become overwhelmed, we lose our patience, we forget things, we become emotionally unavailable to the people we actually love. Because we spend so much of ourselves trying to be available for everybody else. And this is why I believe that paying attention to your capacity is one of the greatest forms of self-respect. I also want to leave you with something in this thought process. Because I don't feel like we say this loud enough. Sometimes the reason you're frustrated isn't because you're doing something wrong. It's because you've been living beyond your capacity for so long that you've forgotten what life feels like when there's room to breathe. You become so accustomed to rushing from one responsibility to the next, you know, answering every text message, making yourself available and saying yes before you've even checked in with yourself. That slowing down almost feels uncomfortable, it feels unfamiliar. And whenever something is unfamiliar, we have a tendency to question whether it's right when in reality it may be exactly what we've been needing. I think God has a way of reminding us that we were never created to carry everything. We often pray for peace, but we continue to hold on to everything interrupted. We ask God to give us rest, but we do not make room for it. And my baby, if everything falls apart because you finally took care of yourself, then perhaps you are carrying something that was never yours to begin with. You know, I learned that every season doesn't require the same version of me. And I'm thankful for that because there were seasons when I survived by constantly moving, constantly producing, constantly proving that I could handle whatever was placed in front of me. But these days I'm learning that there is just as much strength in saying not today as there is saying I'll take care of it. There is just as much wisdom in protecting your peace as there is in showing up for other people. The healthiest version of you is far more valuable than the exhausted version of you. So as you move throughout this week, I don't want you to ask yourself how much more you can squeeze into your schedule. I want you to become curious about yourself again. I want you to pay attention to how your body responds to certain environments, how your heart feels after certain conversations, and how your spirit responds when you're constantly giving without ever allowing yourself to receive anything. And baby, those things matter. So before you commit to something this week, I want you to take a moment to just pause. Before you automatically volunteer, I need you to stop. Before you agree because you don't want somebody to be disappointed, I need you to pause. Before you tell yourself, I'll just push through this one more time. I need you to pause. Not because. Not because you know you are trying to become unavailable to people that that is not what it is. You are trying to become available to yourself again, and baby, that is a huge difference. Now, let's take one more deep breath together before we leave each other this morning. Breathe in through your nose slowly, hold it gently. Now release it through your mouth, and again, breathe in peace. Hold it. Now breathe out the pressure to carry what was never yours. You know, I'm hoping that you remind yourself that you are allowed to live within your capacity without apologizing. And my prayer for you this week is that you become honest with yourself before you become available to anybody else. Pray that you start measuring your worth by how much you can carry and begin measuring it by how well you're caring for the life God has entrusted to you. I pray that this week is filled with moments where you choose peace over pressure, you know, rest over approving and wisdom over guilt. Thank you for spending this little bit of your morning with me. I never take your time, your trust, or your presence for granted. I'll see you next week, my baby. Be gentle with yourself.