When being "set apart" feels like crap.

I don't know about you, but I like being a counselor to others. The sounding board for problems. The listener and shoulder to cry on. I like encouraging people, helping them in times of need, and offering hope and prayer when friends are upset and despondent.

I do NOT, however, like to be on the receiving end of all those things above. I don't like this new phase of life that God has put me in. In a word, I am - vulnerable. And as much as I have been fighting this new position, I can't help it. I am finally facing the one thing in my life that I have been pretending wasn't an issue. The elephant in the room. (No fat jokes! But...good one.)

Whenever someone comes to me and says "Living for God is just too hard. I have to give up this or that and I can't hang out with who I used to, I can't live that life and it's too hard. It's just not fair" my response has always been "We are set apart! As Christians, we are set apart and what feels like unfairness is actually God protecting us from pain!"

Yes, I fully believe that God's "rules" for life, are not actually rules to hold us down and bum us out, but protections from us getting hurt and carrying emotional scars and baggage that will forever weigh us down.

But if you're asking me to believe that too, well that just hits too close to home. And this week, it has hit so close to home that I have had to make some tough realizations. Yes, I am the toughest person I know, and yes, I have kept the world at a distance, and yes the extra weight I have carried around served its purpose to keep people away from knowing me fully.

Now that I know that, what will I do with it? I'm making a decision to not sit in this sin anymore but to find scripture to fight off the lies that I have believed my whole life. Maybe this will help you, too:

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." - Romans 12:2 

Does that hit you like it hits me? I have conformed to the patterns of this world my whole life. The world says: Don't let anyone too close. Develop armor. Find a way to always have the upper hand. Look out for yourself first.

But what does Jesus say? "Greater love has no man than this: that he would lay his life down for his friends."

If I allow God to renew my mind, I will be transformed. Then and only then will I be able to see what God's will is for my life - his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Maybe it's time for all of us to actually believe in ourselves as much as we believe in others, and to listen to the advice we give and let God apply it to our own hearts. I don't know...maybe.

-Liz