People Pleaser

I am a people pleaser. I know - pleaser is not a word but it best describes how I feel. I learned from youth that if I don't please those around me, survival becomes unbearable.

Even if I have to fake it in order for those around me to be happy, content and comfortable, their needs met, then so be it.

I'll survive another day.

Recently I spent a few days with a friend. I watched and listened. There was not a lot of contentment in her life. I saw and heard...me, my life. From what I was hearing, she spends most of her day and nights doing for others.

A change in their life happened recently that brought them great joy. Their dad had not given them the approval they were waiting for and felt that they needed. But inside she knew the changes made were positive and in the right direction. Still, she had a need for his approval. It weighed heavy on her mind. Almost to the point of reconsidering making a change back to how things were.

Negative thoughts and non approval from dad and hearing negative from those she considered friends left her struggling.

What is the answer for her. I didn't know how to respond but did know something was stirring inside of me.

After hours of hearing myself being described I could do nothing more at that point but ponder.

I wake each morning and ask the Lord what He would have me do with this day before me for His glory. I know it in my heart and seal it there. I enter my day, determined to fulfill those very plans.

Then life happens. People pull on me this way and that. I bend to and fro. I place their pleasures and needs before my own, before the plans I am to be doing for the Lord which puts a great deal of stress on me and oftentimes keeps me from the blessing I could have been, a blessing this day could have been.

What is wrong with her....I mean us?

I learned a great deal from listening to her. That is why I like to be a listener more than a talker.

I/we have a new determination. We are going to support one another. Both of us are going to continue to ask the Lord for direction and at the same time, allow others the freedom to grow in their own walk by not being so dependent upon us.

....and oh ya, we are going to step on and crush the egg shells we have been walking on...giggle