I have spent entirely too much of my life being hungry for things that were never going to nourish me.
And the embarrassing part? I knew better.
I know a salad is probably going to do more for my body than a burger. I know the difference between something that satisfies a craving and something that actually provides nourishment. Yet somehow, when it comes to my soul, I have been standing in the spiritual drive-thru ordering a large validation with a side of people pleasing, wondering why I’m still hungry thirty minutes later.
Ma’am. Please pull forward.
When I was little, my mama used to tell me to finish eating my food before drinking anything. She didn’t want me filling up on something that would ruin my appetite before I’d eaten what I actually needed.
And this morning, I could almost hear God asking me the same question.
“Baby, what have you been filling up on?”
Because somewhere along the way, I developed an appetite for being needed. For being liked. For being dependable. For being the person everybody could count on, even when I couldn’t count on myself to recognize when I was exhausted.
And I called it love.
Sometimes I even called it obedience.
But if I’m being painfully truthful, there have been moments when disappointing people frightened me more than displeasing God.
There. I said it.
In Matthew 5:6, Jesus says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
Not blessed are those who hunger for applause. Not those who thirst for acceptance. Not even those who exhaust themselves trying to prove they’re good people.
Righteousness.
And I had to sit with that because Jesus didn’t promise to satisfy every appetite I developed. He promised satisfaction to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Which means I need to stop assuming that just because I’m hungry, what I’m craving must be good for me.
Because my appetite has lied to me before.
In Matthew 4, Jesus is hungry after fasting forty days and nights. And the enemy approaches Him with an opportunity to turn stones into bread.
Now, bread wasn’t inherently wrong. Hunger wasn’t sinful. But Jesus refused to let a legitimate physical need become the reason He stepped outside the Father’s will.
And that’s where God started rearranging my furniture without asking permission.
Because people pleasing has often been my bread.
The need for acceptance is real. The desire to be loved is human. But I have allowed legitimate desires to convince me that illegitimate sacrifices were necessary.
I have said yes when I wanted to say no. Apologized for boundaries I had every right to establish. Continued pouring into relationships long after I realized the investment wasn’t mutual.
And then had the audacity to ask God why I was so depleted.
Girl, because you’ve been feeding everybody else while starving yourself of the very obedience He’s asking of you.
And here’s where Bring It On entered the conversation.
Because Torrance thought she was leading a championship-winning cheer squad until she discovered that the routines she’d inherited had been stolen from the Clovers.
Imagine working that hard, perfecting every movement, performing with confidence, only to realize you were faithfully executing something that was never yours to begin with.
And I wonder how much of my life I’ve spent performing routines I inherited from survival.
Be agreeable. Be useful. Don’t upset anybody. Make yourself indispensable. If you can keep everybody happy, maybe nobody will leave.
Five, six, seven, eight!
And there I go, doing emotional backflips for an audience that didn’t even buy a ticket.
Spirit fingers and everything.
Because apparently I have enough energy to put on a halftime performance for people who didn’t ask for one, but when God asks me to establish a boundary, suddenly I’ve pulled a hamstring.
And the worst part? Some of those routines were never mine to begin with.
They were choreographed by abandonment, rejection, grief, and the desperate little girl who learned that being needed sometimes felt safer than simply being loved.
I wasn’t born knowing how to perform for affection.
I learned.
And now I’m asking God to help me unlearn what once kept me emotionally alive but is no longer helping me spiritually grow.
Then there’s John 5.
And let me be honest about this one because I know we like to read Scripture and pretend we would have responded with the patience of a seasoned saint.
Not me.
This man had been dealing with his condition for thirty-eight years when Jesus approached him and asked, “Wilt thou be made whole?”
Now, respectfully, Jesus.
If I have been unable to walk for THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS and You approach me asking if I want to be well, I’m probably going to be offended.
Sir.
Do I look like I’m here for the scenery?
You think I’ve been hanging around this pool for the complimentary refreshments?
And THEN Jesus tells him to rise, take up his bed, and walk?!
Psh.
I can only imagine myself thinking, “Oh, so we’re doing jokes today?”
But that’s exactly why this passage confronts me.
Because Jesus wasn’t asking the man whether his condition was real. He knew. He wasn’t minimizing thirty-eight years of suffering. He was confronting him with the possibility of something different.
And the man’s response wasn’t yes.
It was an explanation of why he couldn’t get into the pool.
He described the obstacles. The absence of help. The people who kept getting there before him.
And while those circumstances were real, Jesus was standing in front of him offering something the pool never could.
I wonder how many times I’ve done the same thing.
God confronts me with the possibility of change, and instead of responding to Him, I begin presenting evidence.
“But God, You know what I’ve been through.”
“But God, You know why I have trouble saying no.”
“But God, I was just trying to love people.”
And perhaps He’s asking me whether I actually want to be free from the behaviors I keep defending.
Because being needed has become familiar.
And familiarity can feel an awful lot like security, even when it’s keeping me stuck.
The man didn’t need another explanation of the pool. He needed to respond to Jesus.
And I don’t need another explanation of why I developed an appetite for approval.
I need to decide whether I’m willing to stop feeding it.
Because healing may require me to move differently from the way I’ve lived for decades.
And that is uncomfortable.
Especially when the old version of me knew every step of the routine.
Luke 9:61–62 confronts me from another direction. A man expresses his willingness to follow Jesus but first wants to say farewell at home. Jesus responds with a warning about putting a hand to the plow and looking back.
And while loving people isn’t the problem, I have to ask myself how often I’ve allowed their approval to determine whether I’ll follow through on what God is asking.
Because everybody deserves love.
But everybody does not get unlimited access to my time, my energy, my peace, or my obedience.
And I am learning that I can love someone without making myself responsible for every disappointment they experience.
I can be kind without being available.
I can be compassionate without being consumed.
And I can disappoint someone without being disobedient to God.
That last one?
Whew.
Because for years I have confused somebody being unhappy with me with God being unhappy with me.
And those are not the same thing.
I keep returning to something my mama taught me at the dinner table.
Don’t ruin your appetite.
And suddenly I understand it differently.
I don’t want to lose my appetite for God because I’ve filled myself with approval. I don’t want to be so satisfied with being celebrated by people that I no longer recognize when I’m spiritually malnourished.
I don’t want my hunger for acceptance to become greater than my hunger for righteousness.
And I don’t want to confuse being full with being nourished.
Because I can be surrounded by people who love what I do for them and still be starving for the intimacy with God that requires me to stop doing.
Maybe the goal isn’t to stop being hungry.
Maybe it’s to cultivate a hunger that can survive disappointment, rejection, uncertainty, and seasons when nobody applauds.
A hunger that says I’ll still obey when it costs me someone’s approval.
I’ll still love when I have to establish a boundary.
I’ll still follow when the next step feels unfamiliar.
And I’ll stop confusing stability with stagnation simply because the old routine feels comfortable.
Because in Bring It On, Torrance eventually had to abandon what was familiar and develop something authentic.
And perhaps that’s where I am.
Standing before God with a lifetime of rehearsed movements, realizing that knowing the routine isn’t the same as knowing the One I’m supposed to be following.
And for once, I don’t want to ask Him to bless my performance.
I want Him to change my appetite.
Because the most frightening thing isn’t that I’ve been hungry for the wrong things.
It’s that I’ve gotten so good at feeding those appetites that I almost stopped noticing what was starving.
Mama told me not to drink before I finished my food.
And God is teaching me not to fill up on people before I’ve made room for Him.
Because I can spend my entire life doing backflips, hitting every count, smiling through the exhaustion, and giving everybody spirit fingers…
And still miss the only approval that matters.
I don’t want to spend another season perfecting a performance God never asked me to give.
I want to be hungry enough to put the spirit fingers down.
And obedient enough to get up and walk.