A Teacher’s Lounge and Two Words

There are moments that never really leave you.

One of mine happened in a teacher’s lounge.

A group of colleagues wasn’t trying to be cruel. They thought they were just stating a fact. “Edie’s just… too intense.”

Two words. That’s all it took.

I smiled, excused myself, walked into the bathroom, locked the stall door, and cried.

Not because it was the first time I’d heard it. Because I knew they were right, at least from where they stood.

I care deeply. I ask hard questions. I notice what other people miss. I feel injustice in my bones. When I’m excited, everyone knows it.

For years, I thought those things were flaws.

A few months later, I left that school. At the time, I called myself a failure.

Decades later, I wonder if God was leading me somewhere I could stop apologizing for how He made me.

Maybe You Know This Feeling Too

If you’re neurodivergent, you’ve probably heard your own version of “too much.” Too sensitive. Too loud. Too honest. Too different.

The world tends to reward people who blend in. A lot of us were never built for that, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

For a long time, I confused belonging with changing myself.

Scripture tells a different story: “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” — Psalm 139:14

David didn’t say he was wonderfully made because everyone understood him. He said it because God made him. That changes everything.

What “Intense” Actually Meant

What people called “intense” was really passion mixed with a nervous system that experiences the world differently.

I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I was trying to be honest about what I noticed, what I felt, what mattered to me.

Maybe that’s why those words hurt so much. They questioned something God had placed inside me, and maybe inside you too.

Called by Name

Eminem’s “Beautiful” has stuck with me for years. It’s that raw, unguarded admission that feeling broken doesn’t mean your story is over. It’s one of the few songs that says the quiet part out loud: sometimes the hardest fight is believing you still matter when the voices around you say otherwise.

Those outside voices are loud. But God’s voice is louder.

Isaiah reminds us: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine.” — Isaiah 43:1

Called by name. Not “too much.” Not “too intense.” Called by name.

From Wound to Ministry

Here’s what I’ve learned since: a lot of the people in my life today and the folks I work with are told the same things I was. “Too emotional.” “Too intense.” “Too much.”

I don’t hear a problem to fix anymore. I hear someone who needs to be understood because I know exactly what that feels like.

Maybe that’s why God let me walk through those lonely places. Not to shame me. To prepare me. Paul writes that God comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can turn around and comfort others with that same comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

Our deepest wounds have a way of becoming our greatest ministry.

You Are Not Too Much

If you’ve spent your life feeling like too much, hear this: you are not too much for God.

He isn’t asking you to become someone else before He loves you. He already knows you and delights in you: every emotion, every question, every quirk, every struggle.

Psalm 139 doesn’t promise you’ll fit in. It promises you’ll never be unknown.

Sometimes that’s the belonging we’ve all been searching for.

Have you ever been told you were “too much” or “not enough”? How has God helped you see yourself differently than the world does?