If You're Wishing You Had More Limbs.

Back in high school, my best friend and I would spend our nights talking about our desperate desire to be used by God. We wanted to do something in this life, something that was bigger than ourselves, something that mattered, something that resembled Jesus. We wanted to love extravagantly, to give our lives away like we were commanded. We were wide-eyed idealists, with full hearts ready to take on the calling God bestowed upon us. We wanted to be in the business of loving messy people, and we thought we'd never look back thinking differently.I can't speak for her, but the honest truth of my own heart is sometimes I do look back.You see, what they don't tell you about loving and serving others is, more often than not, you'll feel like you don't have enough hands and feet to serve the way you feel called to serve.One person will fall, and you'll reach for them, only to hear your name being called in the other direction. You'll stretch your other hand out as far as you can, but then another person you love will go down. And all you'll be able to do is reach a foot in their direction and hope for the best. Before you know it all your limbs will be occupied and tired, and yet there will still somehow be more people you want to reach. You'll find yourself repeating, "I wish I had more limbs."I think it is really easy to get burned out when doing ministry, to grow tired of loving people. That thing called compassion fatigue that we often ignore and are scared to admit exists; it is real. You might recognize it in yourself when you notice your once-full heart sounding hollow, when you find your used-to-be wide eyes growing dim, when your limbs start to ache from being stretched too thin, when apathy and indifference start to take the place of your prayers.If you're like me, you feel guilty, so you try to push through. Without even realizing, you turn the ministry and the relationships that were entrusted to you into an act of will instead of a response to Jesus. When you still can't shake the guilt, you tell yourself you're a failure because God told you to go love the broken and to give your life away, but now  you're bitter, though you once took joy in servanthood. You once were excited by the chance to be Jesus to someone, but now you dread it. You once were full and able to pour out, but now you're empty and asking how in the world you got here.There are days I sit and look at my hands, at the spaces between my fingers, and weep over the reality that I'll never be able to stop people from falling through their cracks, that I cannot be a perfect servant, that I was never supposed to try to be in the first place. And I am humbled for the millionth time as I remember that there is a reason I am not the Savior.It is in that humbling that Jesus comes and comforts me.In asking to give my life away, he didn't mean that I should neglect my own. When he told me to go love the broken, he didn't mean for me to forget to love him first. You cannot give what you do not have. You cannot serve his people well unless you first let him serve you. Only he can be all things. Only he can carry the weight of this brokenness without crumbling. Only he can save.I can take rest in the knowledge that these burdens, these relationships, were never for me to bear alone. It is his limbs that stretch all the way from the beginning to the end and never tire. It is his hands that hold the whole universe, and nothing slips through their grasp.He has them. He's had them all along.I know that the scriptures are true—it is in losing my life that I gain it. But I've learned that I must seek Him every day to learn how to lose it well, to lose it in such a way that I somehow wind up with more of Him to give away.So, if you're like me, occasionally looking back, feeling the fatigue, wishing you had more limbs—I think these words are for you. I want you to know it's okay; you're not alone. God holds you as you remember and recite these prayers, as you serve and love others.words by Jacqueline Winstead and photo by Kailin Richardson