The Truth about People Pleasers

Maybe I should have just titled it A truth about people pleasers. It's hard being a people pleaser. I am one. It messes with your motivations and why you do things. It also makes you feel horrible when you think someone doesn't like you.

I feel like God is really challenging me in this area right now. I feel like I'm being faced with it right and left. I find myself afraid of what people have said and haven't said.

I talked to my mom about something that someone said to me last week via email. My mom knows my life and what I have to cope with and my mom (who is a people pleaser and loves people a lot! with such a loving heart) told me to let it go. I can ruminate about things, because I just want to please everyone and I know my mom was wise to say this to me.

Yesterday at church, a woman spoke with me about the church nursery at the new church we are attending. Over the past few months, God has been laying it on my heart to submit to authority and love my family well, and also about how I make requests to others--to make them respectfully and be slow to becoming offended. So, I listened as she explained and requested that I begin leaving Eli in the nursery on his own.

We tried leaving Sami when she was this age. I left her with a good friend who knew Sami and she loudly cried the whole time. It just wasn't in her to be able to stay by herself. I see the same thing in Eli. We don't have family around or anyone he stays with regularly. He is an independent fellow, but I am going to wait until he is 2 and then will leave him in Sunday School. I don't think my husband and I would be able to endure leaving him to cry the way Sami did. We have strong willed children. And no one in this nursery knows Eli or has interacted a lot with him--because there's a lot of children in the nursery--I don't fault them for this at all. There isn't anyone there that he knows well enough to feel safe with yet.

I also realized 2 other things. Rather than simply volunteer for nursery duty (which I have done in the past and it really has stressed me), I declined and said I would keep him in the foyer with me then. I was okay with it. But, then I had to think through all of it later.

At our new church, church membership is based upon the approval of the other members. What if this gal has decided she doesn't like me and that would keep us from becoming members of this church? I have to trust that to the Lord. I have to be okay that even at church, not everyone is likely going to like me. I love the Lord and I love people a lot, but conflict is bound to come up at some point--or even just differences in personalities. And that's what it is in this case, I think.

I am thankful for God's reminders to me this morning from my Bible Study about Grace and from Jerry Bridges book about Grace. I am certain there are reasons why these are the books God has given me to read right now =)