When God Says "I Got It"

A few weeks ago, I found myself at Staples, frustrated and pressed for time. I was working on a project for Unashamed and needed color copies, but of course, my office copier decided to have other plans. So there I was, heading to their self-serve copy center, just trying to get this one simple thing done.

I made my copies, headed to the parking lot, and that's when I spotted it, a glaring typo staring back at me from the page. Seriously? I sat in my car for what felt like forever (okay, it was 15 minutes, but it felt like forever), wrestling with my laptop, getting more frustrated by the minute. Finally got it fixed and marched back into Staples, time crunch and all.

That's when I noticed her.

A young woman standing near the copiers, and as I walked past her to get to the machine, she approached me. She started trying to speak, but I quickly realized she didn't speak English. Out came my phone with Google Translate, you know the drill. Through our digital conversation, I learned she needed help making copies. She'd already put $5 credit on the machine but couldn't figure out how to work it.

When I looked at her phone to help her print, everything was in Spanish. We're talking through Google Translate, trying to figure this whole thing out together, and as I'm helping her print these documents, I start seeing what they are. Police statements. Documents about abuse, hers and a child's. My heart just sank.

The line at Staples was getting longer, people were getting impatient, and she had a lot more documents to print. They didn't need to be in color, black and white would work just fine. So I offered to take her to my office where I could print everything for her.

She didn't have a car. And here's where my heart took over my head, I offered to drive her. This woman didn't know me from Adam, but I could see the desperation in her eyes. She looked younger than my 42 years, and I'm only 4'9", so when I say she was shorter than me, she was really short. She just looked scared and desperate.

She agreed.

In those seven minutes to my office, through Google Translate, her story unfolded. Smuggled from Honduras with her son. People who promised help but then took her child once they got here. She'd been living with men who were now telling her to find her own place. She had no family here, no one she knew, and she was terrified. She'd heard her son was being hurt, and she was trying to get to the police to file reports.

Y'all. My heart was breaking.

As I'm printing her documents at my office, my mind is already racing. How can Josh and I help? We've got my prayer room/office, we could set up a bed and dresser. She could stay with us while she gets on her feet. We could help her navigate the system, find her son, get her situated.

Because that's what I do, right? That's what we do. We see a need, and we go all the way. We don't just hand someone $50 and say "get a hotel room." We open our home. We move people in. We go big or go home.

But here's the thing I'm learning, we don't always have to do the most to be helpful. We don't have to overextend ourselves to every breaking point just to serve someone well.

I'll be honest with you, this was June, and it was literally the first month in our 18 years of marriage that Josh and I didn't have someone living with us. For our entire marriage, 18 whole years, we haven't had a complete year where someone wasn't living in our home. Someone we were helping get on their feet, doing a favor for, trying to lift up. We honestly don't even know what it feels like to just be a family of four, plus our 6-month-old granddaughter and 2-year-old grandson. We're always helping somebody, always giving someone a place to stay.

And in that moment, I felt the Lord say, "You don't need to do all that. I purposely don't want y'all to have anyone living in your home right now. I just want it to be y'all."

That hit me hard. We've been over-serving. Doing things without even asking Him if that's what He wants us to do. We just automatically assume it's the right thing to do, so we do it. But I'm learning that God is giving us a season to chill out. We've done enough. We've served, we've given, we've poured out, and right now, He's saying "I got it. I can handle it from here."

Can I ask you something? How many of you have been serving to your own detriment? How many of you have been serving from a place of your own need, your own brokenness, without really going to God first and asking, "Do you want me to give this? Do you want me to do this ministry? Do you want me to help this person?"

Instead, we just do it because it feels like the right thing to do, because it's what we know how to do. And listen, I'm not saying we shouldn't be helping and giving and serving, not at all. But I am saying we need to start really going to God about it first.

Because too many of us are burnt out and tired. We've given and given and served and served from vessels that were already broken. And all of that oil, all of that sowing, all of that giving and doing that we poured out, it was being wasted because we were pouring from empty cups into cracked vessels.

Here's what I'm learning about serving without burnout:

God doesn't need our exhaustion to accomplish His purposes. He's not impressed by how tired we are or how much we've sacrificed if He didn't ask us to sacrifice it in the first place. Sometimes our over-serving is actually our way of trying to control outcomes or feel needed, rather than trusting God to handle what He can handle just fine without us.

There's a difference between being available and being overwhelmed. God wants us available, ready to move when He says move, ready to give when He says give, ready to serve when He says serve. But He doesn't want us so overwhelmed that we can't hear His voice clearly or so depleted that we're serving from fumes instead of overflow.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is set a boundary. Not every need we see is our assignment. Not every person we can help is ours to help. This doesn't make us selfish or hard-hearted, it makes us wise. It means we're stewarding our resources, our energy, and our capacity so that when God does call us to step up, we actually have something to give.

Your worth isn't determined by how much you serve. I had to sit with this one for a while. Sometimes we serve not because God called us to, but because we need to feel valuable, needed, important. We tie our identity to being the one who always says yes, always steps up, always goes the extra mile. But your worth was established at the cross. You don't have to earn it through service.

God is still God when we rest. The world doesn't fall apart when we take a break. His plans don't get derailed when we set boundaries. He was handling things just fine before us, and He'll handle them just fine when we step back and let Him.

So what happened with the young woman? I helped her print her documents. I prayed with her. And then I showed her how to get to the police department, which happened to be just two blocks down the street from my office. And then I trusted God to take it from there.

It wasn't the dramatic rescue I initially envisioned. It wasn't the big, sweeping gesture that my heart wanted to make. But it was what God wanted me to do in that moment, help in a practical way and then trust Him with the rest.

And you know what? That's enough. Sometimes enough is enough.

If you're reading this and you're tired, bone-deep, soul-weary tired from giving and serving and pouring out, maybe it's time to ask God if He's calling you to a season of rest. Maybe it's time to ask Him which needs are yours to meet and which ones are His to handle through someone else.

Maybe it's time to trust that God's got it, even when your hands aren't the ones doing the work.

Because He does. He's got it. And He's got you too.