"You're like a river that overflows its bank"

           "You're like a river that overflows its bank"

I'm like a river that overflows its bank... I'm a river that overflows.....I overflow? I overflow. Oh no.

                                              Ouch.

   I've always struggled with feeling like I'm not good enough due to the fact that I am simply "too much".

  I'm too loud, too hyper, too anxious, too hard to handle, too stressful, too fat, take up too much space, too hard to love, too messed up, too crazy, too black and white, too all over the place, too impulsive, too stupid, too careless, too wreckless. Just over all too much.

  I've always felt like I should just shrink back and if I could just be less "me" everything would be okay and fine. I still struggle with this. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this because it's still such a near and hard struggle.
  I think I used Anorexia in a way to help me not only shrink physically, but emotionally, and behaviorally. As if the shrinking of my physical self were a way to teach myself to do so in every other sense of self. I wanted to make "me" disappear; sometimes I still do, which is why this is so hard to be talking about. It's really hard just straight up not liking who you are.  

  The past couple months I've done a lot of changing though. Early December I had a big fall apart and come to Jesus meeting. Everything, all at once, fell apart and I lost some of the most dear and precious friends I had. I also lost more peoples' trust than I can count on one hand, and for good reason. I spent the majority of that month in tears and in bed. January rolled around and I started actively changing things. I changed a lot. I felt like a completely different person in many different areas. And one of the most shocking and liberating ways in which I felt I had changed, was in that I was finally starting to like, or dare I even say, love, parts of myself.
Then I heard it,

"You're like a river that overflows its bank."

  Oh no. No, no, no, no, no... God, please, no. Has the change I thought I've implemented not actually taken place? I'm still too much? What do I do?  I still ruin everything. I'm still wreckless. I'm still a hurricane, destroying everything in my path. I knew this was too good to be true. I knew I wouldn't love myself for long. I'm too much, I'm too hard to love. 

I broke down and I cried... and I cried, and I cried some more.  I was devastated. I had gone so long without even think about enough this, or enough that. I hadn't been thinking about trying to shrink myself away. I wasn't even trying to shrink away physically. I hadn't thought I was too much, I hadn't even thought "I'm finally NOT too much."  I just wasn't thinking about it at all. It was incredible, to not be thinking and criticizing everything about myself.

But when I heard this, it hit me and I start thinking.... Crap, I've been so busy just going and trying to grow, I forgot to focus on trying to shrink myself, so none of this even counts, because I'm still too much.

Expletive, expletive, expletive!!!

After I got through the initial anxiety attack, I started praying about it legitimately rather than just beating myself up and asking God why He made me the way He did and why He lets me be too much. The more I prayed about it, the more I remembered this verse:

"He must increase, but I must decrease." -John 3:30 (KJV)
or in the NIV it says "He must become greater; I must become less."

 
   But the thing is: I can't MAKE myself shrink, become less or decrease. I can't will power myself into being less than I am. I can't just stop being a sinner. I am born into sin. I embody sin. I can't shrink myself to be good enough. 

  I've tried for years to just become less "me". I tried everything in my own power that I could to get rid of me. Along with what I said earlier with my Eating Disorder, I thought if I cut myself, the blood leaving my body was a physical representation of the things I hated about myself, bleeding out. A draining of my blood for new blood to come in; a draining of myself for a new me to replace.
I tried to be more quiet when I was out. I told myself I wouldn't talk or laugh loud or even cough because then I was too much. I beat myself up to no end if I got in someone's way on accident, say, walking down the hallway or something silly like that. I apologized profusely if I did (and still catch myself doing so now).
  You're always in the way, Nichole. You're taking up more than your fair share of space.

  I tried, for what felt like an eternity, to do exactly what I thought that Scripture was saying. I MUST become less, right? That's what it says, and that's what I was trying to do, yet I was failing miserably. Why?

 I was focusing on the "I" must decrease, rather than the "HE" must increase. It is really a "He must increase, that I may decrease." Because try as I may, as I said before, I can't shrink myself. The only way for there to be "less me" is for there to be "more him". This is made more evident once you look at the context of this, too.
 
  Jesus and his disciples were spending time together in the country side and He was baptizing. John started baptizing as well and some of John's disciples started arguing about people going to him to be baptized. John continues to tell them that "a person can only receive what is given to them from heaven" and that he is not the messiah, but just one sent ahead of Him. His joy is complete because of Jesus and he able to be doing what he is doing simply because He allowed him to. Then, after that being said, is when he says that Jesus must increase and he must decrease. He couldn't be doing what he was were it not for the greater of God in him.

  Meaning, I cannot decrease unless I increase God. I will not decrease unless I increase Him. Which was actually very comforting to realize. I was so worried that the changing I had done was nonexistent because I wasn't focusing on trying to be less, or even be better. All I was focusing on was growing in my relationship with Christ. I was overwhelmed with thinking I don't know how to make myself less. I don't have time to be thinking about that when I just want to think about God and have Him be the center of my thoughts again, not myself. But that's where it hit me:
I was doing exactly what I should have been. When you consume yourself with Christ, you don't have room, or time, or even care to be consumed with yourself.  I loved that. I loved that time, and I loved not thinking about me or focusing on just trying to make myself love myself. So when I heard that I was still "too much" I thought I was doing everything wrong, but the thing is, is that the love for myself came the more I focused on God. The more I focused on making God bigger rather than me smaller, the smaller I became. 

  Allowing yourself to not think about yourself is extremely freeing. I can not express to you the freedom that came from not trying to make myself something different; just being and allowing myself to simply be. Being with God.




  A cup can only spill what it contains. Even the focus of trying to lessen yourself is still focusing on yourself. It's still filling yourself with you: how to fix you; lessen you. You can try and try and try to focus on emptying yourself, but because you are focusing on yourself, you will do nothing but fill yourself with more of you. You will continue to have the overflow of you because you're filling your thoughts and mind with thoughts of you. You're filling yourself with just more of you.

BUT when you are full of him it inevitably means there will be less of you because you can't be fully consumed with two different things at the same time.
I can't overflow "me" if all I contain is Him. If I am full of Him, I will spill Him. If I am full of Him, my overflow will be an overflow of Him, and what an amazing overflow to have. I LOVE being around those who just exert the love of Christ. Their entire being is an overflowing of Him, which is exactly how I want to be.

My very best friend was the one who told me that I am like a river that overflows, and while the intention of saying that was to say that I was overflowing "me" too much, and it hurt like crap, it helped me realize the importance of filling myself with God, so that when I overflow, it's not a negative overflow. That comment in the context, broke me. Into a million pieces. But that breaking allowed me to see the parts of me that were still focused on me, rather than on Him.
  I even googled "verses about how to make yourself less" and everything that came up was about making Him MORE! That's my focus.  HE is my focus. That's what I'm searching for. That's what I'm seeking out.

  This post is a lot shorter than a lot of my other ones but I just found this helpful and encouraging and wanted to share. Enjoy!!

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