I have spent a great deal of my life putting myself last.
At the time, I thought that was love.
I thought that was ministry.
I thought that was what good Christians did.
I thought that was what sons did.
I thought that was what priests did.
I thought that was what wounded people did when they wanted to be useful and not become a burden to anyone else.
Take care of everyone.
Carry everything.
Do not complain too loudly.
Do not ask for too much.
Do not need more than people can give.
Make sure everyone else is okay, even if something inside you is quietly falling apart.
There is a kind of person who learns early that love means watching the room.
Who is tired?
Who is angry?
Who is about to break?
Who needs help?
Who needs comfort?
Who needs money?
Who needs a ride?
Who needs prayer?
Who needs protection?
Who needs me to disappear a little so they can survive?
And if you live that way long enough, it starts to feel holy.
It starts to feel like vocation.
It starts to feel like Christ.
But sometimes it is not Christ.
Sometimes it is fear wearing a halo.
Sometimes it is trauma dressed as service.
Sometimes it is the old wound saying, “If I am useful enough, maybe I will be loved. If I carry enough, maybe I will be safe. If I never become inconvenient, maybe no one will leave.”
That is hard to admit.
Because the caretaker in me is not evil.
He is tender.
He is loyal.
He is strong.
He knows how to survive on almost nothing.
He knows how to make a way when there is no way.
He knows how to keep a house running, how to sit with illness, how to pray through exhaustion, how to hold another person’s fear without immediately falling apart.
He has done good work.
He has loved people.
He has kept going when many would have collapsed.
So I do not want to hate him.
I want to thank him.
But I also have to tell him the truth:
You were never meant to be God.
You were never meant to be everyone’s savior.
You were never meant to carry the whole world in your chest until your own soul could not breathe.
Christ said to love your neighbor as yourself.
He did not say, “Love your neighbor instead of yourself.”
That distinction is beginning to matter.
For years, I think I confused self-abandonment with holiness. I thought putting myself last was automatically Christian. I thought my needs were interruptions. I thought rest was laziness. I thought boundaries were selfish. I thought saying no meant failure.
But the dark night has been teaching me otherwise.
The dark night has shown me what happens when a person keeps pouring out without being filled.
The heart becomes dry.
The prayers become thin.
The body starts speaking in pain, exhaustion, swelling, tension, panic, and heaviness.
The soul begins to resent the very people it loves.
And then you feel guilty for the resentment, so you bury that too.
Down it goes.
Under prayer.
Under duty.
Under “I’m fine.”
Under “somebody has to do it.”
Under “this is just my cross.”
But not every burden is the Cross.
Some burdens are just burdens.
Some were handed to us by fear.
Some by family systems.
Some by poverty.
Some by illness.
Some by church expectations.
Some by the belief that if we stop holding everything together, everything will collapse and it will somehow be our fault.
I have had to ask myself a painful question:
Did Christ ask me to carry this, or did I pick it up because I was afraid not to?
That question cuts.
Because I do care.
I care deeply.
I care about my mother.
I care about my family.
I care about the wounded.
I care about the dying.
I care about the dead.
I care about the forgotten.
I care about the queer kid hiding in the pew.
I care about the person who has no one praying for them.
I care about the world, sometimes so much that it becomes unbearable.
But caring is not the same as drowning.
Compassion is not the same as spiritual self-destruction.
Ministry is not the same as disappearing.
And love is not proved by how completely I erase myself.
Maybe that is one of the lies the dark night came to burn away.
The caretaker in me thought he had to keep choosing between himself and everyone else.
But Christ does not speak that way.
Christ restores order.
Heart.
Soul.
Mind.
Strength.
Neighbor.
Self.
God at the center.
Not me as the center.
Not everyone else as the center.
God.
When God is not at the center, even love can become frantic. Service becomes panic. Prayer becomes obligation. Care becomes control. Help becomes resentment. Ministry becomes exhaustion with a stole around its neck.
I am beginning to understand that if I am called to care for souls, especially the dying, the departed, the wounded, and the grieving, then I must learn how to care without being consumed.
I cannot stand at the veil if I am constantly abandoning my own soul.
I cannot pray for the dead if I am secretly becoming dead inside.
I cannot offer Christ’s peace if I refuse to receive any peace myself.
I cannot keep blessing others while cursing the body and life God gave me.
That is not humility.
That is distortion.
The Sorrowful Mother has been teaching me this quietly.
She knows what it is to stand near pain.
She knows what it is to watch suffering and not be able to stop it.
She knows what it is to love without control.
That may be the hardest lesson of all.
Mary stood at the Cross.
She did not run.
But she also did not climb onto the Cross and call that faithfulness.
She stayed.
She witnessed.
She loved.
She surrendered.
She trusted what she could not understand.
Maybe that is the shape I need to learn.
Stay near the suffering.
Do not abandon the wounded.
Pray for the dying.
Honor the dead.
Care for my mother.
Love my brothers.
Serve where Christ sends me.
But do not climb onto every cross I see.
Some crosses belong to Christ.
Some crosses belong to other people.
Some crosses are not crosses at all, but systems, expectations, fears, and old wounds demanding sacrifice.
I have to learn the difference.
That is not easy for me.
My instinct is to help.
To fix.
To overthink.
To prepare for every disaster.
To carry the emotional temperature of the whole room.
To put myself last before anyone even asks.
But maybe the new self in Christ does not have to live that way.
Maybe the new self can care and still breathe.
Maybe the new self can serve and still rest.
Maybe the new self can love deeply without taking ownership of every outcome.
Maybe the new self can say, “I am here,” without also saying, “Use me until there is nothing left.”
The caretaker who put himself last helped me survive.
I will not shame him for that.
He came from a hard place.
He did what he knew.
He protected people.
He protected me.
He kept love alive in a world that often made love feel dangerous.
But now Christ is asking for something truer.
Not less love.
Better love.
Love with God at the center.
Love with boundaries.
Love with breath.
Love that does not secretly resent the people it serves.
Love that can say yes honestly and no faithfully.
Love that knows I am a child of God before I am useful to anyone.
That sentence is hard for me:
I am a child of God before I am useful to anyone.
Before ministry.
Before caregiving.
Before priesthood.
Before family obligation.
Before the next crisis.
Before the next need.
Before anyone praises me for being strong.
Before anyone thanks me for holding things together.
I am already beloved.
Maybe that is what the caretaker forgot.
Or maybe he never had time to know it.
So now, in this strange clearing after so much darkness, I want to sit with him gently.
The tired caretaker.
The over-functioning son.
The priest trying to prove he deserves his collar.
The wounded child who learned that being needed felt safer than being known.
I want to tell him:
You can put the bags down now.
Not all of them.
Not forever.
But some.
You can rest without disappearing.
You can be loved without earning it.
You can care without becoming Christ.
You can serve without bleeding yourself empty.
You can let God be God.
You can let other people have their own journeys.
You can let the world be enormous without carrying all of it in your ribs.
You can begin again.
And maybe that is part of coming out of the dark night.
Not becoming selfish.
Not becoming cold.
Not abandoning the work.
But letting Christ teach me the difference between holy service and holy-looking self-harm.
Letting the Sorrowful Mother show me how to stand near sorrow without becoming swallowed by it.
Letting the Holy Spirit reorder the rooms inside me.
Letting my own soul receive the care I have tried so hard to give away.
The caretaker who put himself last is not being cast out.
He is being healed.
He is being relieved of a burden that was never his alone.
He is being invited out of the basement of the soul and into the light of Christ.
And maybe, when he learns to stand there without shame, he will become what he was always meant to be:
not a martyr to everyone else’s need,
not a savior with empty hands,
not a frightened child trying to earn love,
but a priest with a whole heart,
a son who can breathe,
a servant who knows when to rest,
and a child of God who finally believes that love is not something he has to purchase with his own disappearance.