What is it to receive?

I am not very good at receiving. Have you ever thought about this before? When someone gifts you with something, material or not, do you have a compulsion to want to give back right away? Is there something inside of you that can't rest until you know that you have repaid the favor or found something special to give in return?

My husband brought this up the other evening, when I was asking a friend to watch our daughter so that we could go out on a date for the first time in many months. It pains me that I have not been available to this friend, to watch her kids, to care for her intentionally and pay her back for all that she has given to me by caring for me in the ways that I am in desperate need of right now. To think about this consciously, I realize that everyone has different seasons of life where they are more or less available to others. This has been a very stormy season for me. And because of that, I have been available to my daughter, and occasionally to my husband. And that's about all I am able to pour out right now.

When God is trying to get me to see something, He will often make it appear in my life in different context on many occasions. Case in point, as I searched to find a great verse to ponder on receiving, I came across Isaiah 61, which just happens to be the focus verse for this great Beth Moore book that I started reading a few months back. I have lost focus on the book, even though I know that it is exactly what I need to be reading right now. So, here, God insists that I take His Spirit seriously by re-introducing this passage in to my world:

⁷ Instead of their shame

my people will receive a double portion,
and instead of disgrace
they will rejoice in their inheritance;
and so they will inherit a double portion in their land,
and everlasting joy will be theirs.

Even now as I ponder who I would share this blog with, I hesitate in what I am writing, and labor over how to express my points. How long Oh Lord? How long will I be enslaved to pleasing others? This place is supposed to be free of that pressure to make sure it is all perfect so that I don't give someone else license to not love me.

Symbolism-seeing bald eagles for freedom.