Originally published Monday, 11 April 2016.
Friends, let’s be honest on this day, today. My heart is heavy with stuff. Yeah, I try to put it all together out there for others to see, flawless and whole. But that’s not me. I’ve been honest with myself and have taken a long look at what my life what it is about. In this busy life we call ours, it’s really becoming a management of one urgent crisis or another.
My shoulders are heavy with burdens, and I'm tired and weak.
“Lord, I lift my burdens to You alone and I lay them down at your feet. Will you give me some simplicity today?” I prayed those words the other day. I simply put it all out there for God to hear. Liberation came in just in the confessing and I realized that I was trying to do things on my own.
Immediately, I was convicted of some false insecurities that continue to rise up (in my soul and spirit) and drag, weigh, and bear down upon my mind. My problems, my cares, my duties, my hopes, my dreams were anchored in my own efforts. “Wait…I thought to myself…I have freedom in those areas.” Or at least I thought I did.
In the confessing, I realized I was trying to create a comfortable life for myself and my feelings. On top of that, I also realized that I was covering my life with right “to-do’s” or tasks and such but I was forgetting about the one important thing needed. Can we just be honest today? Aren’t there those days we all face, where it takes this kind of realization to see where you need to grow in your simplicity of managing life?
What I heard back from God, (yes, I know it was His voice) was “Will you just walk with Me?”.
There were a lot of tears involved in the process. Then I remembered a season in my life that I used to cry often everyday and all day. My life was full of regret of a list of things that I never accomplished. My next thought became one of rejoicing because of a major shift and many changes that have occured in the recent years of my life. I don’t live a life of regret-filled days anymore.
I rejoiced in the fact that those days of regret are over and now I can choose to adopt the pace of God, my Father, in the life of my today. If I could let you into my brain for a moment, there’s a stillness that needs to happen inside of your thoughts that causes you to choose your best life in considerations of what you have around you, the blessings in life instead of the regrets of life. (I am realizing this lifestyle goes deeper than your task list or the things you think about any morning like…”I’m behind on so many things!” kind of thinking.)
Now I’m getting stuck in the multiple list of thoughts that come rising up in a woman’s mind especially when she feels behind, unfulfilled and a list of unmet needs are left open in her life. Okay, now back to the choosing.
There has to be season that as you are emptying your life of what it isn’t, and there is a choice to rejoice in what it is. In the choosing to accept the rejoicing, the living, the owning your life, the doing of life, you must celebrate with what you have, and begin believing that anything is possible with God in the middle of it all.
There I said it, not simply said, because life isn’t like that. At all. It’s complicated, full of tensions, stresses, and problems. But when we confess that we can’t do life without God, then that’s when the miracles start happening. In that way of thinking, you have to admit there is more than what God has intended FOR you and designed you for and you MUST surrender the controls over to HIM. He knows what is best and right and good FOR you. He knows how big your tiny shoulders are. He knows your capacity for loads and He hasn’t forgotten your to-do list. He put the passions inside of you to accomplish what He has designed you for.
He hasn’t forgotten where He has put those things. Have you forgotten where your strength comes from? I did. I honestly thought…”okay God, I can do this (believing that I had to do what He has called me to do on my own.) That’s not right honestly, because I need God to accomplish what HE has put inside of me to do and what HE wants to purpose in my life.
Simply said, I need Jesus every hour of the day to live. Honestly, this IS the life I am in (and I don’t know how it is with you). I need Him to carry me, to help me choose what I need to be doing, to carry out what He wants me to do, and most days I am overwhelmed simply by His goodness in my life. I am complicated, full of tensions, and stresses just like you. Challenges come and go, but I can’t live or exist as His much loved child without Him.
These are the things that are on my mind today. What’s on yours?
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