I’ve always loved loving people. When someone is hurting, I want to comfort them. When someone feels rejected, I want them to know they’re valued. And when someone needs encouragement, I want to be the person who offers it.
For most of my life, I simply thought that was my personality. Then I began learning about spiritual gifts and discovered that I have the spiritual gift of mercy. Suddenly, so much about myself made sense.
But I also discovered something I hadn’t considered before. Sometimes our greatest strengths can become areas of vulnerability.
When Loving Others Leaves You Hurting
Romans 12:6–8 describes several gifts God gives believers, including serving, teaching, prophecy, encouraging, giving, leading, and showing mercy.
These gifts are meant to help us serve God and others. They’re blessings, not burdens. But I’ve learned that having a compassionate heart doesn’t mean I always make wise decisions.
I’m extremely sensitive to other people’s feelings. When someone is hurting, their pain affects me deeply. I want to help them, encourage them, and make things better. And because I care so much, rejection can be especially painful.
I want people to love me. I want to feel appreciated. I want to know that the love I give matters to someone.
That longing didn’t begin when I became an adult. Growing up, I spent years trying to earn my father’s approval. I loved him dearly, but compliments were rare, and I desperately wanted to hear that he was proud of me.
As I grew older, I carried that desire to feel loved and accepted into other relationships. I didn’t always recognize how much it influenced my emotions—or my decisions.
When Love Doesn’t Feel Like Love
Have you ever loved someone deeply but struggled to feel loved in return?
I have.
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that quality time is especially important to me. When someone chooses to spend time with me, I feel valued and loved. But when that time is missing, I can begin to feel unimportant, even when the other person doesn’t intend to make me feel that way.
There was a period in my marriage to Mike when we weren’t spending much time together. I began feeling lonely and unloved. And rather than recognizing that we might express love differently, I allowed those feelings to convince me that something essential was missing from my marriage.
I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted someone to choose me. And that longing left me vulnerable in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
When Temptation Finds a Vulnerable Heart
During that difficult period, a respected younger doctor crossed professional boundaries and made an indecent proposal. He wasn’t my treating physician, and what happened had nothing to do with the unrelated health scare I was experiencing. But his attention reached a part of me that had been aching to feel loved.
Suddenly, I was facing a temptation I never imagined would become part of my life.
I was married. I loved my husband. I loved Jesus. And yet, I was vulnerable. That’s difficult to admit.
It’s easy to believe we’d never be tempted to do something that goes against our values—until we’re confronted with something that appeals to a longing we’ve allowed to grow.
I share more about that experience in my memoir One Text Away: A Doctor’s Indecent Proposal. But the lesson I want to share here is about something much bigger than one temptation.
It’s about learning to recognize our vulnerabilities before they begin directing our decisions.
A Gift Still Needs Wisdom
Proverbs 4:23 tells us: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
For years, I thought guarding my heart meant protecting myself from people who might hurt me. Now I understand that it also means being honest about my own desires, weaknesses, and choices.
My gift of mercy hasn’t changed. I still want to help people who are hurting. I still want to show kindness to people who feel rejected. And I still believe God wants me to share his love generously.
But mercy doesn’t mean I have to make myself emotionally available to everyone. Compassion doesn’t require me to ignore boundaries. And loving someone doesn’t mean I should look to that person to satisfy needs I haven’t honestly addressed.
Sometimes guarding my heart means recognizing when I’m seeking approval instead of God’s guidance. Sometimes it means having an uncomfortable conversation with Mike rather than allowing disappointment to grow into resentment.
Sometimes it means stepping away from a situation before temptation has a chance to take root. I can have a loving heart and still need to protect it.
Learning to Use My Gift Wisely
I’ve learned that God doesn’t give us spiritual gifts so we can depend on our own strength. He gives us opportunities to serve others, but we still need his wisdom to know how to use those gifts well.
My compassion is something I’m grateful for. I believe God has used it to help me love people I might otherwise have overlooked, including the man who murdered my son. But I also recognize that my longing to be loved can affect my judgment if I’m not careful.
I don’t want the fear of rejection to determine my choices. I don’t want the desire for someone’s approval to become more important than my relationship with Jesus. And I certainly don’t want something God intended for good to become an excuse for making choices that could hurt the people I love.
Instead, I want to keep learning. To love generously without abandoning wisdom. To show mercy without losing sight of truth. To recognize my weaknesses without allowing them to define me.
And to remember that the God who gave me a compassionate heart can also teach me how to guard it.
Our gifts may be part of how God uses us, but recognizing our vulnerabilities helps us use those gifts wisely.
If you’d like to know more about how I discovered my gift of mercy, I share that story in How to Recognize God’s Gift of Mercy in Your Life.
Could one of your greatest strengths also be an area where you need God’s wisdom and protection?
