Reassure

You’ve reassured others, but how well do you allow others to reassure you? Do you find yourself making excuses as you hear reassurance? You feel they just don’t understand exactly where you are. If only they knew all the details. If only they felt your heartache. If only they could stand in your shoes. You think no one knows how you feel. No one has ever gone through your precise situation. You can’t fully accept the reassurance, because it’s not a perfect fit to you or for your situation.

You are unique, indeed. No one is exactly like you, and no one is living your life. However, that doesn’t presume there aren’t commonalities in experiences among people. Everybody is not going to completely understand you or your situation, but nearly everybody invested enough to reassure you is connecting with you on some level; otherwise, they wouldn’t feel the need to reach out to you. You don’t have all the answers when you reassure someone else; why do you expect somebody to have all the answers when they reassure you? You can receive some level of reassurance in each person’s attempt to reassure you—even if it’s an idea of how you shouldn’t reassure others in the future!

God is the one who knows how to reassure you right where you are. He knows you and your situation more intimately than you do. And he has the big picture of what’s best for the purpose of your life in mind when he reassures you. You can trust him, but in order to trust and respond, you must actively listen. Rationalizing is merely a struggle for control, and you will not win. It might feel as if you win when God loosens the tug-o-war rope because of your persistent insistence to win the struggle, but he always holds the other end.