The cost of my oil

“You’re too much.”

I’ve heard those words whispered like a verdict, as though passion is weakness and intensity is shame. But they don’t know. They don’t know the cost of my oil.

You see me here, but you don’t know what it took for me to still be standing. You don’t know the nights when I wept until silence pressed against the walls. You don’t know the weight of prayers that felt like they fell into nothingness. You don’t know the crushing.

Because that’s what this is—the crushing. The olives do not yield oil until they are pressed. Grapes do not pour forth wine until they are broken. And the anointing is not born in ease, but in agony.

Hannah knew this.

In the temple, her tears were mistaken for drunkenness. Her prayers were misread as folly. Her grief was too heavy, too raw, too much for the polished and proper onlookers. Yet her crushing birthed Samuel—the prophet who shook a nation, the answer that altered history. Without the weight of sorrow, there would have been no oil. Without the misunderstanding, no mantle. Without the weeping, no prophet.

So when you say, “You’re too much,” what you mean is—you see the oil but not the crushing. You see the overflow but not the pressing. You see the strength but not the breaking.

My oil is not cheap. It came through doors closed in my face, through wounds I thought would never heal, through prayers I almost stopped praying. It came through misunderstanding, rejection, grief, and nights I thought would swallow me whole.

But this—this is where the anointing is made. Not in applause, but in agony. Not in perfection, but in pressing. Not in strength, but in surrender.

So if my worship is too loud, if my prayers are too desperate, if my tears are too many—understand: you’re only seeing the oil. You’re not seeing the cost.

And I’d rather be “too much” with oil than acceptable without it.