All I Have To Offer
I have nothing to offer.
No talent, no skill, no ability.
No money, no resources, no commodities.
I have nothing of value, worth, or weight.
There is nothing I can give.
For I have only one thing:
My heart.
My heart is all I have to offer.
My heart is over-emotional, highly sensitive, and way too intense.
My heart which has been beaten, battered and bruised.
My heart that contains more powerful and intense emotions than any one human should be able to hold, contain or experience.
My heart feels so deeply.
My heart loves so passionately.
My heart is so easily hurt yet so quickly moved on behalf of another.
My heart feels multifaceted emotions of an endless variety, never-ceasing to explore the greatest extremes of feeling – of life.
My heart is alive, vibrant and aware in a way that few people understand and even less experience.
Why do so many people tell me that these extreme emotions are bad? I think it is because they do not understand it, they have never experienced it and so they are afraid of it. They are afraid of the intensity I exhibit in my passion. It doesn’t mean my extreme sensitivity is bad. It means they are incapable of feeling the way I do. Their paltry lukewarm feelings are inferior to my vibrantly strong feelings and that frightens them.
Now I do not want to seem so puffed up – my intensity and sensitivity is more often than not incompatible or inconvenient with the world. It is not very conducive to reality or functioning like most other people.
But – does that then stand that it is bad?
Or perhaps the truth is that my heart is meant for something higher, something more pure, beautiful and good than this earth?
For much of my life I have felt beaten down and trampled upon. I have kept my head down and my glance averted because of shame. I have lived in humiliation over my state of intense sensitivity that I have so frequently been condemned for.
But my heart is awake.
My heart is alive.
My heart’s pulse quickens at the hint of something beautiful: a lovely flower’s petals, delicate notes from a piano, the smile in someone’s eyes.
There is so much beauty in the world and I am aware of it.
There is joy, there is love, and there is hope.
Even when I feel the torments of hell inside of me I cannot deny the glory of God and all the good He has made.
Yet so often I feel so much of the joy and love I desire has been denied to me.
Just as I have an intense capacity to feel sorrow I can also feel such extensive and wild joy.
Yet most often it is sorrow that is my companion.
I do not know why God has made me the way I am.
I do not understand why He has allowed certain events to happen in my life.
I cannot fathom how God is going to make everything okay on this earth.
I feel as though I am doomed to always live this unbalanced life; suffering and overwhelmed by pain, yet carrying inside me the deathless hope and capacity for tremendous joy.
I wish that all of this made sense.
I wish I could understand.
I wish God would make it all clear to me.
I wish I could know for certain that God will not leave me in this state forever but will truly bring me into the love and joy He has caused me to hope for.
For God is the author of Hope. My hope exists because He has created it, He has lit the flame. And there is nothing I or anyone else can do to extinguish it; no matter how hard I have tried, it is incapable of being destroyed. God breathed this desire and hope inside me and only He can take it away.
How precious this agonizing hope is!
This hope that causes me to ache day and night, that is relentless and unrealistic, is still so dear to me; it is a part of who I am, I am inseparable from it.
I know without any doubt that the Lord shall take me into Heaven one day. I know that in Paradise with the Lord my heart shall be fully content and free. I wait with unrestrained longing for that perfect glory that He shall reveal in me.
Streams in the Desert by L.B. Cowman
August 15th
Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).
The best things of life come out of wounding. Wheat is crushed before it becomes bread. Incense must be cast upon the fire before its odors are set free. The ground must be broken with the sharp plough before it is ready to receive the seed. It is the broken heart that pleases God.
The sweetest joys in life are the fruits of sorrow. Human nature seems to need suffering to fit it for being a blessing to the world.
Beside my cottage door it grows, The loveliest, daintiest flower that blows, A sweetbriar rose.
At dewy morn or twilight's close, The rarest perfume from it flows, This strange wild rose.
"But when the rain-drops on it beat, Ah, then, its odors grow more sweet, About my feet.
Ofttimes with loving tenderness, Its soft green leaves I gently press, In sweet caress.
A still more wondrous fragrance flows The more my fingers close And crush the rose.
Dear Lord, oh, let my life be so Its perfume when tempests blow, The sweeter flow.
And should it be Thy blessed will, With crushing grief my soul to fill, Press harder still.
And while its dying fragrance flows I'll whisper low, "He loves and knows His crushed briar rose."
If you aspire to be a son of consolation; if you would partake of the priestly gift of sympathy; if you would pour something beyond commonplace consolation into a tempted heart; if you would pass through the intercourse of daily life with the delicate tact that never inflicts pain; you must be content to pay the price of a costly education--like Him, you must suffer. --F. W. Robertson
