How I learned that loving God and serving others did not require abandoning myself
For much of my life, I knew how to be present for everyone except myself.
I knew how to be the dependable one—the helper, the encourager, the woman people could call when they needed support. I believed that being useful made me valuable. If I served well, loved well, remained available, and became someone others could depend on, perhaps I would always have a seat at their table.
At the time, I did not recognize this as disappearing.
I called it love.
I called it loyalty.
I called it serving God.
Some of it was genuine love. I truly cared about the people I supported. But healing has helped me acknowledge another part of the story: low self-worth and shame had convinced me that my value was connected to what I could provide.
Being needed gave me somewhere to hide.
I Disappeared Into Good Things
I disappeared into motherhood.
There was a season when I was raising three small children, attending nursing school, carrying grief, and trying to remain dependable to everyone around me. I poured most of my attention into loving my children and caring for my family.
Those were good and meaningful responsibilities. The problem was not that I loved my family. The problem was that I stopped recognizing myself as someone who also needed care.
I disappeared into serving others.
For a long time, I believed loving people well meant always being available, even without healthy boundaries. Because my faith mattered deeply to me, I also began to equate that kind of self-sacrifice with loving God.
I overfunctioned, overgave, and continued pouring even when I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted.
I became so accustomed to being the one who poured into others that I did not always know how to receive when care was offered to me. At other times, the care I needed simply was not available.
Still, I kept going.
I had mistaken depletion for devotion and self-neglect for sacrifice.
When Grief Interrupted the Performance
Grief did not only take from me.
It interrupted the life in which I kept disappearing and made me quiet enough to see myself again.
Grief became the friend and the lesson I did not know I needed. It sat me down when I would have preferred to keep moving. It stripped away my ability to pretend that I was fine simply because I was still functioning.
In that quiet, I began to recognize how exhausted I had become—not only from loss, but from years of carrying, serving, helping, and trying to remain everything everyone needed.
Grief slowed me down long enough to notice that I was missing from my own life.
It did not give me immediate answers. Healing did not happen all at once. But grief created enough stillness for me to begin asking questions I had avoided:
Where am I in the life I have spent so much time tending?
When did loving others begin to require leaving myself behind?
Did God truly ask this of me, or had I turned my need to be valuable into a form of service?
Those questions were uncomfortable, but they were necessary.
The Seat I Was Trying to Earn
Healing revealed that I already had a seat at God’s table.
I did not have to earn it by being endlessly helpful, agreeable, available, or needed. The foundation of the gospel is that God loved us first. He had already paid the price for the belonging I was working so hard to secure.
I had spent years fighting for seats at other people’s tables while overlooking the truth that God had already welcomed me to His.
He did not need me to perform my way into His presence. He did not need me to exhaust myself to prove that I loved Him.
Serving God and loving His people should flow from knowing what He has already done for me—not from fear that I must keep earning His love or my place.
I do not serve so that God will love me.
I serve because He already does.
That truth is at the heart of Thriving Jewelz: learning to abide with God rather than perform for Him.
Tending My Own Table
I am learning that including myself does not mean I have stopped loving or serving others.
It means I am no longer willing to abandon myself while doing it.
Including myself looks like caring for my health, honoring my limits, making room for my writing, and faithfully tending the passion God has placed in me through Thriving Jewelz. It means accepting responsibility for the life He has entrusted to me instead of believing that everything and everyone else must always come first.
I wish I could say I have completely stopped disappearing, but I have not.
Disappearing became a habit. Unlearning it requires intention. There are still moments when I automatically place myself last, overextend myself, or feel guilty for tending to my own needs.
The difference is that I am beginning to notice.
I am learning to pause, become honest about what is happening within me, and choose differently. I am learning that growth does not always look like having mastered the lesson. Sometimes it looks like recognizing the pattern sooner and returning to what is true.
For so long, I fought to keep my seat at everyone else’s table.
Now I am learning to release those seats to God. I am learning to tend the table He has already given me and trust Him to bring the people who are meant to sit there.
And little by little, I am learning to take my seat there too.
A Heart Check for the Woman Who Keeps Disappearing
Maybe you recognize yourself in part of my story.
Perhaps you have become so accustomed to being the strong one, the dependable one, or the one who pours that you no longer know what it means to include yourself in your own life.
Take a quiet moment and ask:
- Have I connected my value to how useful I am to others?
- Have I mistaken exhaustion for faithfulness?
- Where have I been caring for everyone except myself?
- What passion, need, or part of myself have I repeatedly placed last?
- What would including myself look like in this season?
- What might God be inviting me to release, receive, or return to?
You do not have to answer every question immediately or have everything figured out.
You can simply bring your honest heart before God and trust Him to meet you there.
Continue Your Heart Check
If this reflection helped you recognize something you have struggled to name, The Heart Check was created as a quiet place to continue that conversation with God.
Through five days of Scripture, reflection, prayer, and guided journaling, you will be invited to become honest with Him—without hiding, striving, or performing.
You do not have to perform your way into God’s presence. You are invited to come honestly.
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