I heard a phrase while watching The Forge that immediately stuck with me:
Be a fountain, not a drain.
There wasn’t a lightning-bolt moment. I didn’t pause the movie and completely reevaluate my life.
I just liked the phrase.
It was catchy.
I think it stuck because it gave a name to something I’ve already been trying to do.
A Personal Cheerleader
I sometimes call myself a personal cheerleader—but not in the rah-rah, wave-the-pom-poms, pretend-everything-is-wonderful sort of way.
I mean the kind who pays attention. 👀
If I notice something meaningful about someone, I try to say it.
If I appreciate something you have done, I want you to know.
If I see patience, kindness, growth, strength, or faithfulness in you, I don’t want to assume you already know it is there.
I want to tell you. 🌸
Not something vague or flattering just for the sake of being nice, but something real—something I have genuinely noticed and appreciate.
Words of affirmation aren’t even my love language. Quality time is.
And life has taught me that words, when they aren’t supported by anything else, can be pretty cheap.
Maybe that is why I don’t want the words I give away to be empty. 🤔
I want them to mean something.
I Haven’t Always Been a Fountain
The phrase may describe something I have been doing for a while now, but I certainly haven’t always lived this way.
There was a season when I was the drain.
Life was hard.
I was miserable, exhausted, anxious, and desperately trying to control things that felt completely out of control. I felt as though life had been sucked right out of me.
And because that was what filled me, that was what poured out of me.
I complained to anyone and everyone who would listen. 😠
Waking up grateful wasn’t part of my thought process.
God’s peace was nowhere in sight.
Recognizing the ways He was providing for me inside the hard things?
Nope.
I couldn’t see it.
I could see everything that was wrong, everything that needed to change, and everything that wasn’t going according to MY plan.
And I was more than willing to tell you about it.
Complaining Is Not the Same as Asking for Help
Being a fountain does not mean pretending everything is fine.
It doesn’t mean keeping our struggles to ourselves, pasting on a smile, or refusing to ask for help.
I want people to tell me when they are hurting. ❤️
I want to pray with them, encourage them, listen to them, and support them through difficult seasons. We were never meant to carry every burden alone.
There is a difference, though, between asking someone to help carry a burden and repeatedly unloading that burden while refusing to examine anything we can change.
My old neighbor, Stepfanie, always said, “Do what you can in the natural and let God do the rest.” Meaning, we have to take action on our end.
Sometimes the situation itself cannot be changed.
Sometimes someone else really is making choices that hurt us.
Sometimes life is simply hard, and no amount of positive thinking will make it less hard.
But even when I cannot change the situation, I can ask God what He wants to change in me while I am walking through it.
For years, I believed other people and my circumstances needed to change before I could have peace.
And while some things around me genuinely did need to change, there was one fairly significant problem with my plan:
I had absolutely no control over anyone but myself.
Eventually, I had to stop waiting for someone else’s choices to become the reason I could make better ones.
I had to allow God to change the way I thought, the way I responded, the boundaries I set, and the decisions I made.
That is still where I struggle when my marching band gets loud. I start looking outward at what needs to change when God is asking me to look inward.
Change doesn’t begin with figuring out how to make everyone else behave better.
It begins with bringing myself back to God and asking:
What needs to change in me?
Starting at the Beginning
During one of the hardest seasons of my life, I went to Pastor Gene, our family pastor, and said:
“I’m sure I need counseling. I have problems. But I think my biggest problem is my relationship with Jesus. I go to church. I attend Bible studies. Yet I don’t have the peace the Bible talks about.”
I knew how to attend church.
I knew how to participate in a Bible study.
I knew many of the right Christian answers.
But peace?
I didn’t have it.
So Pastor Gene and I started at the very beginning.
We met once a week, generally for about two hours at a time, and I began rebuilding my foundation. I learned about God, Jesus, and the Bible—not simply facts I could repeat, but truth I could actually live by.
Brick by brick.
That was the beginning of Journey to Ordinary, my first blog.
Every post I wrote during that season documented something God was teaching me and what happened as I tried to implement it.
I say tried because I did not always implement it particularly well at first. 😂
But slowly, what I knew about God began changing how I lived.
A Fountain Needs a Source
Fourteen years ago, before I had ever heard the phrase “Be a fountain, not a drain,” I wrote about overflowing.
I just didn’t realize that was what I was writing about.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
-Romans 15:13 NIV
There it is. 🌸
A fountain cannot produce its own water.
It can only pour out what is continually flowing into it.
I had spent years expecting people and better circumstances to fill places in me that they were never capable of filling.
Then I wondered why I felt empty. 😭
But when I finally returned to the Source, what God poured into me slowly began to overflow into the lives of others.
Peace.
Joy.
Hope.
Grace.
Truth.
Gratitude.
Not because life suddenly became easy.
It didn’t.
Not because I never struggled again.
I did and still do, more than I like to admit sometimes.
Sigh…
And certainly not because I mastered trusting God on the first, second, or third try. 🤦♀️
Y’all know better than that.
It happened because I began learning where to go when life emptied me.
Second Corinthians 1:3–4 tells us that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the same comfort we have received from Him.
God’s comfort was never intended to stop with me.
His encouragement was never intended to stop with me.
His grace, mercy, hope, and love were never intended to stop with me.
What God pours into us is meant to flow through us. ❤️
Faithful Wherever He Was Planted
Joseph’s life gives us a powerful picture of this. (Genesis 37–50)
Joseph had very little control over where he was planted.
His brothers sold him into slavery. He was taken to Egypt. He was falsely accused and sent to prison. Later, he was placed in a position of authority that allowed him to help save countless lives during a famine.
The pit.
Potiphar’s house.
Prison.
The palace.
Joseph did not choose those places, and he could not control the choices other people made.
But wherever he was planted, he remained faithful.
He used what God had given him to serve the people around him.
Joseph could have allowed bitterness to become what poured out of him. He had plenty of reasons.
Instead, when he eventually faced the brothers who had harmed him, he said:
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
—Genesis 50:20 NIV
Joseph could see that God had not wasted any part of his story.
God doesn’t waste ours either.
The hard places can become the very places where we receive the comfort, strength, wisdom, and compassion we will later pour into someone else.
Not because the hard thing was good.
Because God is. ❤️
What Am I Pouring Out?
Our world gives us plenty of reasons to focus inward.
What do I feel?
What do I need?
What do I deserve?
What should everyone else do differently so that I can be happier?
Feelings themselves aren’t the enemy. Feelings can reveal places that need attention, healing, prayer, or change.
But feelings were never meant to become our compass.
When every conversation begins and ends with me, heaviness follows me into every room.
I know.
I have carried it into rooms before. 😭
These days, I want to ask different questions.
Who needs encouragement?
Who needs prayer?
Who needs someone to listen without immediately trying to fix everything?
Who is doing something difficult and needs to be reminded that someone notices?
Who needs to be reminded that God sees them, loves them, and has not forgotten them?
Sometimes being a fountain looks like a meal, a prayer, a kind word, a text message, or an ear that genuinely listens.
Sometimes it is simply noticing something good in another person and saying it out loud.
And sometimes it means walking into a room determined not to make everything about me.
I won’t do any of that perfectly.
Some weeks I will probably be more of a slow drip than a fountain. 💦
But I know where the Source is now.
When I am empty, I don’t have to demand that other people fill me.
I can return to Jesus.
I can allow Him to remind me what is true.
And then I can take the peace, hope, comfort, and love He continues to pour into me—and pour it into someone else.
Be a fountain, not a drain.
It may be a catchy little phrase.
But it is also a pretty beautiful way to live.
So this week, I want to challenge both of us:
Pay attention.
Notice something meaningful in someone—and say it out loud.
I’m glad you’re here.
— Jenni 🌸
Love God Love People – Danny Gokey
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