Can’t Help Myself

There’s a piece of art that haunts me.
It’s called “Can’t Help Myself” and it’s a kinetic sculpture by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. It was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum as part of its Chinese Art Initiative.

Inside a clear enclosure stands a mechanical arm, endlessly programmed to do one thing: clean up the dark red hydraulic fluid leaking from its own base. That fluid was both its lifeblood and its enemy.

At first, the movements were purposeful. The arm sweeps, spins, gathers, and returns the fluid with robotic grace.

As time passed, and more fluid leaked out than it was able to pull back in, the robot would jerk to life, dragging the viscous puddles back toward itself in frantic, circular motions. Eventually, its movements grew slower. What had once been graceful and methodical became desperate in trembling sweeps, small stumbles, and pauses that felt almost like exhaustion.

Some people cried when they saw it. Some apologized to it through the glass. Somehow, that machine, though lifeless cold metal, had captured what it means to be human: to give everything you have, over and over again, just trying to hold yourself together.

Ultimately, the machine was performing its purpose, endlessly, obediently, yet you could feel the futility in it. The more it tried to save itself, the more it broke down. The hydraulic fluid continued to leak faster than it could ever be reclaimed. And then, one day, it simply stopped.

The Reflection in the Glass

I think about that sculpture often.
And the more I think about it, the more I see myself in that glass box.

I’ve spent years sweeping up the spills of my own life and others…cleaning, fixing, patching, protecting. I’ve built a house of contingencies, a fortress of control. I’ve lived with my head on a swivel, certain that if I just prepared enough, planned enough, prayed enough, I could stop the bleeding before it began.

But like that robot, I feel like I have been leaking faster than I can clean.

I have been abandoned and abused, neglected and dismantled.
I’ve carried those scars like circuitry under my skin, hidden but still sparking.
And so, I became mechanical in my devotion to all things survival, perfection, protection.

Always protecting.
Always performing.
Always pretending that I could keep it all together.

Real Woman Camp

Last Friday, I went to Real Woman Camp for what I told myself would be just a 24-hour trial of rest. A few hours away from home. A little space to breathe. I arrived just a few minutes after the opening began and the room already full, the music already started, and the signal on my phone gone.

The building was loud with laughter and conversation with women seated at round tables that looked far too intimate for a stranger to join. I scanned the room and didn’t see a single familiar face. I almost turned around.

But then someone touched my elbow.

“You need a seat?” she asked gently, like she could sense the fight-or-flight firing off in my chest. She pointed to someone else I didn’t know, and said, “She’s the one you want to talk to.” Then that woman led me to a table and ushered me to a seat.

So I sat.

Several other women. All strangers. I smiled, but inside I was trembling.
My whole body screamed: You don’t belong here. You don’t belong anywhere.
They can see the white-trash kid who never fit in. The one who knew how to disappear before anyone could reject her first.

But they didn’t let me disappear.

They asked me questions. They invited me to sit with them at dinner. They didn’t know my story, but they kept making space for me like they were waiting for me all along. And slowly, my fear started to lose its grip.

The next day, I ran into Mabry and Rachel from my small group. Familiar faces. Safe ones.
We laughed and talked and spent time together and something in me softened just a little more.

The message that weekend was about surrender. About letting go of control.
And I knew, deep in my bones, that this was no accident.

I didn’t come to camp because I wanted to let go.
I came because I was exhausted.
But God brought me there to show me that exhaustion isn’t weakness but a signal.
That it’s time to stop fighting battles He already said He’d handle.
That it’s okay to stop gripping the wheel.
That I don’t have to protect myself from love anymore.

Because what if, in all the ways I’ve tried to defend myself from pain, I’ve also kept myself from peace?

The Season of Waiting

I spoke with my campus pastor, Micah, after church this past Sunday.
As awful as it felt to cry in front of someone else, I couldn’t stop the tears once they came.

When he asked how I was doing, I told him the truth:
That I feel the enemy has been working overtime to isolate me.
That I feel rejected.
That no matter how much I pray, trust, or surrender, I still find myself battling the ache of never feeling like someone’s first choice.

I am pretty sure I even described it as feeling like “the stinky kid in class.”
That’s how deeply this insecurity has settled in.
The enemy has been relentless, whispering lies that the people who once asked to walk this journey with us have gone silent because maybe they’ve changed their minds.
And lately, I’ve caught myself believing that maybe our sponsors are just too kind to say it out loud that they don’t want us to come. That maybe they’re quietly waiting us out.

But I know that isn’t fair. Or true.
They’ve been walking out their part of this process, faithfully, prayerfully, and just as unsure of the timing as we are.

It’s just hard.
Because I’ve done everything I know to do.
I’ve prayed. Submitted. Waited. Surrendered.
And still, we wait on the Certificate of Sponsorship to come through.

I’ve stopped asking for updates because I know there’s nothing anyone can do to speed this up and I don’t want to be a burden.
They’re in this waiting season with us and the last thing I want is to add the weight of my impatience to their already full plates.

But each day that passes feels heavier than the one before.
It’s not that I doubt His promise. I don’t. I know that He is faithful and that everything will occur in His time by His will and not mine. But my heart feels like that robotic arm as though this whole time, I’m still sweeping up the same hopes that keep spilling onto the floor because it feels like nothing ever comes to me without blood letting.

The Stillness That Hurts

Two ancient promises keep popping up for me: one command to rest and one promise to rise:

Psalm 37 says “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.”

Isaiah 40 says “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.”

And I know that.
I know it in my mind.
But my heart is lagging behind.

Because knowing that something is a season doesn’t make the waiting easier.
Knowing that this delay is part of God’s plan doesn’t stop the the feeling of being in a holding pattern.
Knowing that the enemy is whispering lies doesn’t make those whispers quieter.

Sometimes faith feels less like soaring and more like sitting still in a glass box, surrounded by your own spilled exhaustion.

I think that’s why this sculpture keeps popping up for me.
Because I can relate to the monotony, like a creature programmed by fear, not faith.
And yet, even now, God calls me to stop moving.

To lay down the broom.
To surrender the glass walls of my own making.
To trust that I don’t need to clean up the mess before He’ll come close.

Because He already has.

He is already near to the brokenhearted, near to the weary, near to the ones leaking faith and energy and hope. He doesn’t need me to hold the pieces together.

He just needs me to hand them to Him.

The Cry for Surrender

I am exhausted.
Not from work, or effort, or even ministry but from holding on so tightly to everything I cannot control. From trying to be enough to everyone else that they will want me to be around, that I will finally feel like I belong.

I have been lonely for so long, I’ve learned how to live on the bare minimum connection to others to prevent another person from having the ability to get near enough to hurt me. I have spent years believing that if I just stay vigilant enough, I can stop pain from happening.
That if I’m smart enough, fast enough, faithful enough, I can keep myself and everyone else safe.
But I can’t.

I can’t hold it all anymore.
I’m out of hydraulic fluid.
And I can’t help myself.

So tonight, I do what that machine never could and I stop.

I surrender the timing, the control, the outcomes.
I surrender the ache of rejection, the sting of waiting, the heaviness of silence.
I let go of my white-knuckled grip on understanding and give it back to God.

Because He never asked me to carry this alone.
He only asked me to be still, to trust that His hand is already in motion, even when I can’t see it.

And maybe this is the most faithful thing I can do right now.
to stop sweeping,
to stop spinning,
to stop trying to fix what only He can heal.

I may feel like I’m standing in that glass box, but I know the walls aren’t real.
They’re made of fear, not faith.
And when I lift my eyes, I see that I’ve never been trapped at all.

The floor is clean.
The light is breaking through.
And He’s already holding what I’ve been trying so hard to save.

-Candice: Hypervigilant but Learning to Let Go.