Fill My Cup
Psalm 23 is one of my favorite meditative scriptures. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… Most of us know the Psalm well or are at least familiar with the words. I am especially drawn to this line, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.”
When I’m anxious or ill at ease, this is my go to Psalm. I always find myself more centered and calm after I recite it several times. The verses remind me that in every difficult situation God is our sustenance. He is our good shepherd. The image of God filling our cups to the point of overflowing is central to the comfort provided from the Psalm—my cup overflows.
I feel like I’ve been searching my whole life to reach a point where my emotional/spiritual cup was full. The idea that my cup could actually overflow seems too good to be true. In a state of abundance, we have the ability to be incredibly generous to others. The person who lives in abundance can feed themselves and also nourish those around them. Despite this wonderful promise by the Psalmist, even Christians struggle to find purpose and meaning in their lives. Even Christians can feel spiritually empty. Many of us can hardly spiritually feed ourselves, much less nourish those around us. If you are struggling through a broken relationship, the need for spiritual fulfillment and peace can be intense while the possibility of the need being met can seem light years away. This leads me to the topic of the day. How do we fill our empty cups in the midst of a spiritual drought?
#1 Being Busy is Not the Key to Happiness
When you are first emerging from the trauma of a broken marriage or a serious broken relationship, the need to stay busy is understandable. We need distractions to stay functional, to keep us from falling apart. During the first few weeks of the erosion of my marriage, I was too emotionally weak and vulnerable to attempt heavy duty reflection on what went wrong in my relationship. I was too busy trying to survive the day. My solution to my trauma was to replace my deceased marriage with a new marriage to church and career. If I just stay busy enough, I won’t feel the hurt.
I threw myself into my job and into service at church. I was so busy, I didn’t have time to reflect. Let’s be honest. I didn’t want to reflect. I was terrified of what I might learn in those quiet still moments where I stood bare and vulnerable before the Lord. I had a full fledged plan for emotional recovery and it involved being busy, very busy, but I forgot to let God in on my plan. Because of my tendency to jump first before looking, I began to run into multiple dead ends. I didn’t get the promotion at work. I was excluded from leadership. I wasn’t receiving the support and love I needed or thought I needed in my personal relationships, yada, yada, yada. I mistakenly believed I could find the validation I lost in my marriage at work and in my church. But as soon as I experienced hardship in these pursuits, the trauma that I had not properly dealt with the first time, came roaring back, almost worse than the initial heartache. Why did this happen? I was still looking to find my value and worth through validation from others. I was stuck.
#2 Whose Team Are You Playing For?
Like me, you may try to find your worth and value in your personal accomplishments. With a failed relationship under your belt, you may feel like you have a lot to prove and a lot of things to accomplish to restore your sense of self-worth. I know I did. I was striving for earthly rewards rather than heavenly treasures. After feeling disrespected, unloved, and unwanted in my marriage, I was desperate for affirmation. I wanted people at work and church to recognize my value and to cherish my contribution. I had not learned to live content in the knowledge that I was loved and valued by God. I’m both a teacher and a pastor and I can tell you decisively that even humanitarian acts of service in these professions can really be about our own need for a good old ego boost. Although we might do a good job at fooling others and even ourselves about our true motivation for doing the Lord’s work, God knows our true hearts. God’s kingdom is so much bigger than our personal egos. In the pursuit of my own personal validation, I had forgotten the end of the Lord’s prayer. “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done.” I had to recognize what team I was really playing for: Team Me. Yes, I too have wrestled with the devil of ego. I will always struggle with it. We should be playing for God’s team, not our own.
The fortunate news is God really does want what’s good for us and He wants us to use our talents and gifts, but in the right way for God’s glory and not our own. Earthly palaces tend to crumble, but Godly ones stand the test of time. Through prayer and meditation, I’ve learned to recognize spiritual temptations and am learning to see through the seduction of a sparkly façade. Most ego temptations are really doors to misery with a shiny veneer. Handing over the reigns of my life to God was the first and most important step I made toward filling my cup.
Experiencing rejection in any form is hard; Not taking rejection personally is even harder. I’m gradually learning how to transform rejection into reflection. God knows us. He wants to put us in the best possible place for our gifts and abilities and also the best place for our spiritual growth. If you’re moving decisively in a pursuit and if the doors of opportunity continue to close despite your hard work, passion, and desire, you may want to reflect on whether or not that pursuit is worthy of your focus. When we’re playing for TEAM ME, we tend to hang on with a death grip to those pursuits that satisfy our egos and addictions. Perhaps your pursuit is a worldly one and you have forgotten to bring God into the breath of your life. Let it go.
The life I had planned for myself is pretty different from the reality I’m living. I wanted to be happily married, a superstar at my job, an upstanding church member, etc. This is the life I would have chosen for myself if I were able to control my own circumstances. But, despite the hurt and heartache I’ve experienced, my life has been a much more wild and exciting ride. I’ve followed an unconventional course, but I don’t regret a moment and I have learned so much about myself and God’s uncompromising love for me. When I meditate on Psalm 23, I am reminded that God is my shepherd, He will lead me through the storm and He will turn my mortal life into something meaningful and lasting for His glory. He’s already doing just that. This is all the validation I really need.
