I have a cup.
My cup is metaphorical. It holds love. Love for others, love for myself.
You have a cup too.
Growing up, I ran around and splashed love on everyone with my cup of love. I’ve always loved loving people.
The only problem with my cup was that, after I loved someone, I held out my now-empty cup in their direction to be filled by their opinions of me. When people liked me, I felt filled up. I was filling my cup with their splashes of good opinions, and I thought that would satisfy me. If they liked me, appreciated me, noticed me, or pursued me, then I felt filled up.
And it worked, for a bit … just enough to keep me coming back for more.
But I discovered a problem: What happens when they don’t notice you? When they don’t appreciate your efforts? When you discover you’re holding out your empty cups in the direction of people who are holding out their empty cup in your direction?
For me, holding my cup outward didn’t stop in childhood. It crept into my marriage, and eventually I found myself holding out my cup to be filled by my son. As you might guess (or might know), all that running around only made me emptier.
Maybe you understand this running around very well. Maybe people ask you how you are and you answer “Good” or “Fine” even though you’re really not okay. You’re empty.
I know many people like this. As I write this, I think of one friend in particular who tries to convince herself, with the love from her cup, that she is good enough. That she has what it takes and is worth something. That she is worthy of using up oxygen and taking up space.
Since she was little, she’s had this fear that maybe she wasn’t worthy of love. Other people were okay, but not her. Her … she was only provisionally, temporarily approved for life. So long as she pleased people and achieved impressive things, she believed she had the right to exist. But when she failed at something or when it had been a long time since she’d done anything praiseworthy, she started to worry. Like really worry.
Now, the whole time she didn’t know she had this metaphorical cup I’m talking about. That awareness came much later. All she knew was that sometimes she felt okay, but not nearly enough of the time. Most often, she felt either not-okay or just-about-to-be-not-okay. She spent that upsetting time trying to get back to feeling merely okay.
She felt like her cup, even if she didn’t think of it as a cup, had somehow leaked everything out, and if she couldn’t get it filled fast she didn’t know what would happen, but she knew it would be bad. She needed her life passport renewed, like yesterday, and the only way she could think of to do it was to trade love with people.
This girl grew up in church, so she’d always known that God is love. She’d always known He wants us to shower love on other people. So feeling like she was being completely focused on others—and not realizing at all that she was doing it mainly to earn payback for herself—she’d pour some of her own love in the cup and splash people with it. She’d hug someone, so they’d feel her love. She’d serve someone, so they’d see her love. She’d volunteer at the church, so people would know her love’s expanse. Splash, splash, splash—love, love, love.
And then, after showering her love onto others, she’d hold her empty cup out to them and just wait. Hoping. Eager. “Please fill my cup in return! I gave, now you have to give back. That’s the rule. I need you to notice me, appreciate me, accept me. Please pour into my life the approval I need. Tomorrow, we can do it all again. But please, I’m so thirsty. Please love me!”
Sometimes, it worked. People would love her back. And then she felt great … for a little while. Or she’d succeed or win or achieve, and people would praise her … for a day. If she was the best—or at least better than—she felt filled. If she was impressive or had more social media followers than someone else or got some honor, she felt she’d outrun the empty-cup inspector for one more twenty-four-hour period and she could go on, slightly relaxed, and gear up to try impressing people again tomorrow.
By the way, it’s okay to enjoy being social. We shouldn’t care about having more followers than someone else just to try to feel like good people, but we should all just enjoy being social.
That constant, daily, never-ending chore of refilling the cup exhausted her.
Plus, sometimes she couldn’t get anyone to fill her stupid cup. Sometimes her friends weren’t her friends. Sometimes she didn’t earn people’s attention or win the game or get the award. Sometimes someone else got more followers than she had. Sometimes her family let her down. Sometimes she let herself down.
Sometimes everything shattered. Everything failed. All her attempts fell short. And she’d be left staring at an empty, bone-dry cup, wondering how she was going to get through one more day.
Here’s the kicker: sometimes she looked around at the people she was asking to fill her cup, and she saw that they were all holding their empty cups out to her.
Is this your life? Are you running around doing way too much while simultaneously feeling as though you’re not doing enough? There has to be more, doesn’t there?
All of us are born with a desire to be filled, truly satisfied, and whole. Each of us really does have a cup, and it really does need to be filled.
The question is, how can it be filled? And is there a way for it to stay permanently filled?
The answer to the second question is yes, there is a way for it to stay full forever. What fills it doesn’t have to leak out. (We’ll get back to the question of how later.)
Think about how a cup is designed to be used. You don’t fill a cup and then lay it on its side and expect it to hold anything but air, right? A cup ends up on its side only by accident or when it’s being cleaned or put away. Normally, you set a cup on a flat surface on its bottom, causing the opening to face up.
To be filled, your cup has to face upward toward God for Him to fill. Eventually, it will become so full you won’t be able to contain the love that spills out to everyone else.
That’s a picture of the Christian life lived the right way. That’s what lies in your future.
The Christian life is an overflow of a full cup, not a constant effort to fill a cup that’s forever leaking. When we tilt our cups upward and trust God to do His part, we can stop running around to people, hoping they will fill us.
Be assured that the Lord Jesus Christ wants you and me to be, as Paul wrote, “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19).
This type of life is not only possible; it’s the best possible life. And it’s yours for the asking.
As I mentioned earlier, for me, holding my cup outward for others to fill didn’t stop in childhood. It crept into all my friendships. It invaded my marriage. And eventually, tragically, I found myself holding out my cup to be filled by my son.
The form this pathetic cup-tilting took when I became an adult was mainly comparison and unhealthy expectations. Could I get more people to follow me online? Could I gain some award or marker of appreciation at work? Could I outdo others in a variety of categories: owning cool toys, a fancy car, or a beautiful house, or even in the number of friends I have? The list embarrassingly goes on.
Worse, I started comparing children. How many months would it take my son to roll over? Why wouldn’t he crawl? The other kids were already crawling! Come on, kid, say, “Mama,” quick! But wait until I’ve got my camera ready so I can post my—I mean, your—achievement online.
I hadn’t realized I was pitting my child in a race against other children until one day when I saw a boy the same age as my son (nine months) take his first steps. I knew I should be excited for him and his mom, but I found myself feeling disappointed. Less than, somehow. Overshadowed and underworthy.
Cue my competitive side. I vowed to get my boy walking before any more little, um, darlings could pass him up.
I kept standing him up. He kept smiling and then plopping right back down. Gah! Back on your feet, kid.
Smile. Plop.
My son’s first birthday came and went and he still wasn’t walking.
As I reflect back now on my first year of motherhood, I begin to understand Theodore Roosevelt’s words: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”*
You may not be a mom, but can you relate to those feelings of emptiness, not-good-enough-ness, and unworthiness? Do you know what it feels like to believe you just lack?
In my emptiness and joylessness, I learned that it wasn’t Foster, my son, who needed to take a first step—it was me.
I finally realized that God cared more about my heart and my feelings of emptiness than even I did. I glimpsed that the Creator of my heart, soul, mind, and strength—and of yours—wanted to recapture them all and direct them back to His original intention.
Years ago, I was sitting in my soul-searching-quiet-time chair, focusing on Jesus, and He showed me something big. (By the way, I highly recommend you find one of these quiet, special places to go to sit with God.)
God graciously reminded me I was designed to love like my Maker loves. The “God kind” of love isn’t conditional, wanting something in return. God’s love doesn’t pour out from a need to have an emptiness filled. God’s love overflows out of fullness. It overflows. It is a way to share fullness.
And that kind of love wasn’t possible the way I was holding my cup. My love couldn’t overflow to others so long as I needed others’ love to overflow to me first. A cup can’t even be filled while it’s tilted outward.
That’s why the God-kind of love is possible only by holding the cup upward, not outward.
The beauty of being filled by the true Source is that His love is abounding. Imagine Niagara Falls, but bigger. Imagine our cups standing upright, as they were created to stand, with God’s infinite love gushing into them. Then we’d effortlessly overflow into the lives of others—not from ourselves, but from Him who is the Source, so that He could be their Source too.
God stands ready to fill your cup. Permanently. Fully. With no leaks but lots of overflow. This book will show you how that will happen for you.
So who am I? I’m another person with a cup, trying to figure it out. Just like you.
When I was in elementary school, my mom cried because I had no friends. In truth, I just didn’t care about people. But I did care about getting them to fill my cup. I loved being good at things and getting attention for it: skateboarding, drums, basketball, soccer, trumpet, tennis, and computers.
As a white girl, I was a minority in my elementary school. I love that I didn’t care about skin color, and I thrived in a diversity I enjoyed. Then I got to middle school and realized that sometimes color sparks conflict. That broke my heart, and it still does.
Looking back, I realize now that I spent most of my young years thinking everything was about me. It wasn’t until I went to a Christian camp one summer that I learned I could take the full makeup of me—athletic, outgoing, exuberant, and just plain crazy—and use it all for something other than myself. I had felt unfocused and random, but my brother-in-law Steve redefined me from “crazy” to “passionate,” and suddenly everything felt right. I realized I could use my crazy for someone else’s glory. Someone, the only One, who deserved it.
In time, I went from camper to staffer at that camp and have now worked there for over a decade, inviting people to tilt their cups in new directions. Away from family, friendships, jobs, and potential opportunities, so they can be filled by the Source, in order to overflow onto a thirsty world.
I got married in December 2010 (on the awesome “countdown” date of 12-11-10), and then in 2015 our son, Foster, was born. Now, in addition to still working at that same Christian camp, I have the opportunity to travel the country speaking to audiences young and old, teaching people how to hold their cups under the flow of God’s love.
I’ve tried a lot, learned a lot, been through a lot, and been a lot of things to a lot of people, and I am only fully content when I see that God is a lot more than anything else I’ve run after. God is real. God really enjoys time with me. Me. Megan Fate Marshman.
And He feels the same about you.
I have learned three things about the Christian life that define who I am and how to live in a way that sets my cup upright. Those three things shape this little book.
Your life has a main character. You knew that, right? But I’ll bet you didn’t realize that the main character isn’t you. The story is bigger than you (and me). But that one big story involves you, and your part is significant.
I want to be significant. Don’t you? I want to live a life that matters. I want a life that is more than merely being aware of myself. Here’s my journey and here’s my process. Here’s how we’ll get there:
Part 1: There’s only one story and only one main character. The main character isn’t you (or me).
Part 2: However, it absolutely involves you (and me).
Part 3: And your (and my) part is significant.
I want to share this stuff with you because of how it changed me. The journey you’ll follow in this book shows me going from feeling the need to show my own importance to me discovering the importance of others. I went from being self-focused to being self-less, and that transformation rocked my world.
Did you know that such a thing is possible? It is! And I know you want to be invited into something epically big. If you take these truths to heart, you too will be able to walk into any situation and be fully alive and fully free.
I know you want to be a part of something big. And you want to be a significant part of it, not merely a bystander. So many young people engage in social media (I do too!). And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it will never truly satisfy. On social media, you’re a bystander to the lives of others. I myself check social media when I’m feeling most isolated. Ironically, I forget each time that doing so makes me feel even more … yep, you’ve got it … isolated. God calls you—and me—out of a bystander life into the “something big” we hunger for.
The incredible news is that you’re invited to play your very own unique part in what God is up to in this world. Did you catch that? You get to be a part of what God is up to! As you tilt your cup upward, the way a cup was designed to sit, God can and will fill it so you can be a part of all He’s doing! And I mean He’ll fill it to overflowing, what Jesus promised would be, “a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over … poured into your lap” (Luke 6:38).
We exhaust ourselves running around trying to get other people to fill our cups. It’s only when we stop running and seeking love and respect from others, that we’re able to fully and honestly receive the gracious love God gives, and can begin spilling over into the lives around us.
Embrace the truths in this book, and you’ll overflow with love for your friends, family, parents, kids, coworkers, and enemies—not out of a need to be loved by them, but out of the abundance that is the result of being loved by Him.
* “Theodore Roosevelt,” GoodReads.com, accessed June 15, 2017, www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/44567.Theodore_Roosevelt?page=3