When I stop Holding Myself Together
There isn’t a clear beginning.
It’s usually small. Not a crisis. Not a collapse. Just a moment when the room finally goes quiet—and I realize my body didn’t get the memo.
I’m sitting there with nothing urgent happening, and still, something in me stays ready. Like if I relax, I’ll miss something. Like if I soften, I’ll get hurt. Like if I stop managing the moment, I’ll lose myself.
Anchor Story
I didn’t know how much energy I was spending guarding myself
until the guarding started to feel heavier than the risk.
Guarding my tone. Guarding my expectations. Guarding the parts of me that learned—without a meeting, without a decision—that love can be mishandled.
Not always with cruelty. Sometimes with carelessness. Sometimes with pressure that called itself “truth.” Sometimes with a version of closeness that required me to disappear. So I stayed alert. I stayed competent. I stayed in control of what I showed.
It looked like maturity.
It felt like responsibility.
But underneath it was something more tender:
I wasn’t trying to be difficult.
I was trying to stay intact.
And somewhere along the way, the strength I thought was protecting me became the thing that kept me tense—even in safe places. I didn’t lose peace all at once. I traded it slowly for the feeling of being prepared.
Reflection
There’s a reason guarding feels safer than trust.
Guarding lets me keep my name.
My dignity.
My agency.
It lets me stay “me” in a world where love hasn’t always been careful.
And if I’m honest, this is where the skeptic questions live—not as arguments, but as protection:
If I let God lead, who am I then?
What do I lose control of?
What happens if He wants something I don’t?
Those questions aren’t rebellion.
They’re the guard at the door doing its job.
But here’s what keeps shifting in me, slowly, without force:
God does not guard the way fear guards.
- He doesn’t use pressure to get access.
- He doesn’t demand that I shrink in order to be near.
- He doesn’t confuse control with love.
And that’s where the fruit becomes more than a concept.
Peace isn’t just something God asks from me.
Peace is something God is.
It’s the way He holds power—without coercion. The way He stays—without threat. The way He comes near—without taking over. So when peace begins to grow in me, it isn’t me becoming impressive. It’s me becoming less alone. It’s God’s own steadiness showing up inside my chaos—not as a lecture, but as a guard that doesn’t exhaust me.
And then the smallest miracle happens:
My guard doesn’t have to be fired. It just doesn’t have to work so hard. Because something stronger than vigilance is present now—not louder, not harsher, not urgent—just truer.
God is not impressed by my vigilance.
He does not guard by force, pressure, or demand.
The peace Scripture names as fruit is first God’s own life —
steady, gentle, faithful,
unthreatening.
