Tag Archives: burdens

Let Him Have It All

18 Sunday Mar 2012

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“Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.” ~ Psalm 55:22

Sometimes I feel like I can’t give my burdens to God fast enough – I immediately recognize that handling some things can be way above my pay grade.  But other things…smaller things…I have a hard time letting go of.  I insist on carrying them, as if hauling around my little burdens makes me somehow holier.

But I shouldn’t do this – even if things seem small to me, the weight might be more than I can handle.  Casting all my cares on God is the only way to go – and the only way I can live life victoriously in Christ.

Mercies in Disguise

14 Sunday Aug 2011

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“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” ~ II Corinthians 12:9

It was an unusual Sunday at my church – we had special music today.  To me, this is a lovely treat, because it is a moment to just let the music sweep over you and be able to pray through the song, without having to sing it yourself.

The song performed is entitled, “Blessings” and really spoke to where I’ve been at this past year.
Here are some of the lyrics:
What if Your blessings come through raindrops?

What if Your healing comes through tears
?
What if a thousand sleepless nights 

Are what it takes to know You’re near?


What if trials of this life

Are Your mercies in disguise?

Though the sentiment is beautiful, I have to admit this kind of scares me.  A little bit.  Okay, maybe a lot.  The reason it scares me is because this tells me that I might be called to be where I’m at in life.  And I might be called to be here for a very long time.  The truth is, none of us have any idea what God has planned for us.  It might be very easy or it might be incredibly hard.  But even though my time on earth may be difficult, I do know that if I am called to walk a tough road for the rest of my life that I can look forward to an eternity filled to the absolute brim with God’s mercies.

Uff Da

23 Saturday Apr 2011

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“Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you” ~ Psalm 55:22a

Today is one of those days – the kind where I would like to crawl back in bed and start over.  Except that whatever I did to my back makes it hurt when I lay down, so that really doesn’t seem like a good option.  But thank goodness for chiropractors that work on Saturdays, or I would be in a real pickle.

It’s funny how when something hurts, we want it fixed right away.  I wouldn’t dream of waiting until Thursday or Friday to get my back looked at – it hurts a bunch and I want to feel better now.  But if something doesn’t cause actual pain – it is somehow less motivating to take care of.

My laundry, for instance.  Having discovered in college that the secret to infrequent laundry washing is owning lots of underwear (if you’re like most people, you’ll run out of that long before you run out of pants and shirts), I have a tendency to procrastinate as long as possible on doing laundry.  And then, as the days turn into weeks, I notice that my desire to do laundry diminishes with each addition to the rapidly growing pile.  Which then results in a day like yesterday, where I have to do load after load to catch up.  I’m sure if my laundry suddenly caused physical pain, it would get done right away!

I think that sometimes our desire for comfort can overtake our desire to do the right thing and be proactive.  If something isn’t directly affecting us (or causing us pain), it can be easy to shift it to the back burner and not deal with it right away.  But I’m learning that often when you avoid dealing with something, it eventually does cause pain in one sense or another.

If you have things with God in your life that you haven’t dealt with until now – do it.  This weekend we have a chance to focus on all He did for us on the cross and in His resurrection.  Christ died so that you could be free of your sins and burdens.  Take your load to God and don’t put off dealing with it for another minute.  You might be hurting in ways you aren’t even aware – and God is waiting to take that from you.  Let Him.

The Weight of the World

11 Monday Apr 2011

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“For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:30

As are all mothers, I am fascinated by the tiny perfection of my little boy.  His adorable dimpled knees, his endearingly chubby wrists, the perfect curve of his neck, the twinkle in his brown-blue eyes.  But I am most intrigued with his tiny little shoulders.  I know some day he will grow up to have broad, manly shoulders, but right now they are so small and delicate.

What overwhelms me most is the weight he will someday carry on those shoulders.  The weight of responsibilities, disappointments, the loss of his father – the price of living life.  I wish that I could protect him from what he faces, but I know I can’t.  I wish that I could avoid the conversation that will happen all too early about why his daddy is in heaven instead of here.  Whenever we see a young family, my heart breaks to watch my baby zero in on the father, leaning forward in his stroller and staring with his whole little being.  I hate knowing that he will carry the weight of loss on his shoulders long before he becomes a man.

I know it often feels like my own shoulders are stooped with the weight I have to carry.  The load is heavy and exhausting.  By the time I reach the end of my day, I have long since passed the end of my energy, and it’s all I can do to collapse in a chair and be a vegetable.  I sometimes find myself wishing there was someone else to read the bedtime story or help with the nighttime rituals, because by that point in the day I’m fading fast.

And it is, at that point, that I rely on this verse in Matthew the most.  Jesus offers to carry the burdens we shoulder.  He knows that we rarely have the strength to do it on our own, and the weight is light to Him.  What I love most is that Jesus isn’t offering to give us strength to carry the burden – He’s offering to carry it for us.  As much as I love to do things on my own, now that I find myself in a place where I can’t hope to make it without help, I’m only too glad to hand over the load to Him.  It’s a wonderful thing to be able to rest in the strength of His arms.

Let Him carry your load today.  You’ll be surprised at how much easier the path you walk is without it.

 

The Box

06 Wednesday Apr 2011

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“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten” ~ Joel 2:25a

Last night was lousy for me.

The nice people doing my tax preparation called.  That wasn’t necessarily the bad part, because I’m grateful to have help this year.  With everything that happen between my husband’s death and the birth of my son, the idea of trying to do my taxes on my own seemed more than a little foolish.  Anyway, they called to ask me if I could total up all of our medical expenses for 2010, since that might make a difference on my return.

So I pulled all of the bills I could find out of my file cabinet and then I went and got the box.

If it seems I’m making a big deal out of the box, it’s because to me it is a big deal.  This box holds, in many ways quite literally, everything bad that happened to me last year.  Insurance claims.  Hospital bills.  Sympathy letters.  Death certificates.  I have a lot of reasons to hate the box.  But I opened it anyway and dug out everything and traveled down the very darkest part of my memory lane.

It felt like it took forever, and it did take a long time, to get everything sorted out and totaled up.  And when I called the tax people back this morning, they gave me good news about the painful task – it made a pleasant difference in my tax return.  To me, it felt like God rewarded me for rolling up my sleeves and facing the ugly memory of all those bills.

When I went to bed last night, I spent time reading a book that had today’s verse from Joel in it.  Until my husband died, I don’t know if I ever remember reading this verse.  Now, it has almost become one of my life verses, because I revisit it so often.  This verse reminds me that it’s okay to take my box and hold it up before God, both as an offering and a reminder that He has promised to repay all that I have lost.

And while living with a box like this humbles me and makes me more dependent on God, I think everyone has a box like mine in their life.  Maybe not a real box, as is my case, but a very real pile of painful, awful memories of brokenness and loss.  If that’s you, claim today’s verse for yourself.  Take your sorrow before the King and offer it up as a sacrifice.  He promises to restore you.

 

The Dust of Life

21 Monday Mar 2011

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“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” ~ Matthew 19:14

I was watching the news the other evening, which is something I usually avoid.  Not because I don’t like to be informed, but because I prefer reading the news to watching it.  The other night was no exception – what I saw will probably remain with me for a long, long time.  I wish I hadn’t seen the story, but that wouldn’t make it any less true.

The news team was reporting on the alarming increase in the number of people that are downloading images of children being abused.  It was truly horrifying to listen to law enforcement talk about the fact that they are issuing at least five arrest warrants for this per week in the major metropolitan county near where I live.  The story made me physically ill – I couldn’t imagine the nightmare that these children were living.  To strengthen an already overwhelming story, the newscasters included grayed out pictures showing a pair of little shoes, a child’s bow, a tiny baby’s fist.

The photo of the baby’s hand absolutely haunts me.  To think of someone hurting an infant makes me nauseous.  I cannot imagine a person so callous and cruel to hurt a baby.  Babies are so trusting and dependent – the confusion and fright they would experience from being abused must be so terrifying, so damaging.  I look into my precious son’s eyes and cannot imagine anyone being so twistedly hideous inside as to hurt an infant.

But that doesn’t erase the fact that it happens to children all over the world.

I took the title of today’s post from a song from the musical “Miss Saigon.”  The children in the song are called bui-doi, the dust of life – the half-American/half-Vietnamese children that were left behind and socially rejected at the end of the Vietnam war.  The reason I chose this is because of the following lines from the song:

Some pictures never leave your mind
They are the faces of the children
The ones we’ve left behind
…
They are the living reminders
Of all the good we’ve failed to do

I think so often it’s easier to not think about the children that are victims in these terrible situations.  They are often hidden from view, trapped in a nightmare they have no hope of escaping.  Many times they grow up only to abuse children themselves, continuing the vicious cycle.

I know God does not want us to forget about these children.  We are called to take care of the orphaned children – and I believe that extends to emotionally orphaned.  We need to be fervently praying for these precious, wounded children.  We need to support the police officers and law officials that have the difficult job of taking action to end and prevent abuse.  We need to be finding ways to help end the cycle.

Jesus reminded the disciples that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those like the little children.  Keep those little children in your prayers today.

Make Room

16 Wednesday Mar 2011

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“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” ~ Matthew 19:24

Yesterday, I finally got fed up with my cooking utensil drawer and bought a container for my countertop instead.  I realize that the counter is where most people already keep things like wooden spoons and spatulas, but I have way too many to fit in any reasonably sized container.  You see, my husband enjoyed cooking as much as I do, so between the two of us we have every kitchen gadget known to man.  Pasta maker?  Check.  Rice mold?  Check.  Potato ricer?  Jerky shooter?  Lefse griddle?  Check, check, check – and the list goes on (and on) from there.

But I realized yesterday that having so many things actually prevents me from using some of them.  I cook frequently, so I was getting tired of wrestling one of several whisks from a tangled mess of a drawer.  I was starting to see the wisdom of the phrase, “more isn’t always better, sometimes it’s just more.”

And for whatever reason, as I was thinking about all of this, the above verse from Matthew came to mind.

Part of the reason I think Jesus said that it would be difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God is because when you have so much, there is very little room left for God in your life.  A poor person with very few possessions has a good deal more room for God, because they see the need to rely on Him for everything.  A rich person may feel rather self-sustaining in their wealth, but be even more spiritually destitute that the poorest beggar.

As an American, regardless of your class, you are considered to be wealthier than a large percentage of the rest of the world.  With all of the wealth and comfort offered by our country, it can be easy to crowd out God.  Look around you and see what you need to clear out – physically and spiritually – to make room for Him in your life today.

 

Scar Tissue

03 Thursday Mar 2011

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“O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.” ~ Psalm 30:2

Lately, I’ve been voraciously reading about art journaling.  Notice I said reading about it, not doing it.  All my life, I have been somewhat artistic – I enjoying sketching, painting, collage, and all sorts of different things.  I like to try new things and attempt to use mediums I’m not familiar with.  This is, until my husband died.  Up until the weeks of his illness, I had been enrolled in two different art classes, looking for a fun way to learn new things.  After he passed away, I quit all of them.

And, I realized last night, I quit everything else artistic that I do, too.

When this realization hit, it kind of surprised me.  Art is often considered to be very freeing, a good way to express emotions and to give yourself creative space to heal.  It’s almost as if I wanted to complete shut off this part of myself, to close the door on the emotions that lurked within the creative part of my brain.  But in doing that, I have been forcing myself to tip-toe past these closed doors, cowering in fear of what might happen if I acknowledge everything that is shut up inside.

And I think I’ve been doing this because I don’t trust God to heal all of the hurts that arose when my husband died.  It’s as if I showed Him around my heart and said, “You can heal me here and here, but over here, it’s just too much – so we’ll just leave that alone.  The hurt is too great.”

But God IS more than capable of healing all of my hurts.  I, in turn, have to be willing to give Him the chance to do so.  To do this, I must be completely vulnerable with both myself and Him – I can’t ignore or try to hide everything, because stuffing something away doesn’t actually solve the problem.  It just obscures it from view…for a while.  It’s like a deep wound that hasn’t been treated properly and turns into a frightening, twisted, dense scar.  If cared for, that same wound can heal so neatly it’s almost not visible.  The loss I have experienced has unalterably changed my life, but God can heal me in such a beautiful way that it is no longer the focal point of everything I do.

I’m sure you know people that don’t allow themselves to be vulnerable with anyone, ever.  They play things so close to the vest you never know what they’re thinking, if they’re hurting or feeling alone.  I don’t want to become that type of person, especially not with God.  I want to be able to hand over the emotional reins of my life to my Creator and give Him room to heal me from the inside out.  To do that, I need to trust Him with everything in me and have faith He will do what He promises in the Psalm today, to heal me when I call.

Less IS More

07 Monday Feb 2011

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“Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!  The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!  People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich seldom get a good night’s sleep.  There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver.  Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children.  We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us.” ~ Ecclesiastes 5:10-15

So over the past few days I’ve been hit with a double whammy of instruction on how to be content.  Part of it comes from my pastor, who preached a sermon yesterday on the subject.  The rest comes from the book I am currently reading, entitled, “The 100 Thing Challenge.”  Combined, the two have really packed a punch for changing the way I view contentment.

I’ve written about materialism before, but this book has really altered the way I think about it.  I know that I have too much stuff.  I know Americans on the whole have too much stuff.  But I wasn’t getting why we had so much stuff.  The author decides to live a year with only one hundred personal possessions (imagine your house with only one pen in it!) and learns a lot about why we buy all that we do in the process.  He discusses the fact that we often buy things to try to bring to realization how we want to be, not necessarily how we are.  And sometimes we buy in an attempt to fix the past, by purchasing things we may not have had or try to recreate opportunities missed.

As the author talks about getting rid of things, he is surprised by how easy it is to get rid of some of the things that he thought would be difficult to let go of.  And, in letting go of a lot of material possessions, he is able to see himself as he really is.  Which leads to a deeper form of contentment than most people experience, because he is free of the expectations that buying all of this stuff had placed on his shoulders.

I thought about all the things in my house that I should let go of, if I were to take this challenge (he defined his books as one library, which I appreciated).  I have sports equipment that sits in my basement that I haven’t used in years – and am not likely to use for many more until my son gets quite a bit older.  A lot of things I have been keeping, in the light of reading this book, seem almost silly to hang on to.  They could be sold or given away, giving people who actually need them a chance to use them, rather than taking up space in my life and house.

To me, it is interesting to think that getting rid of things in order to have less stuff can lead to contentment.  But it makes sense.  The more you have, as Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes, the more you have to worry about.  By lightening your load, you will then lighten you cares, and be able to focus on those people and activities that you really do love.

It’s a lot to think about.  So, who wants to help me clean out my basement?

 

Is That Really Your Suitcase?

31 Monday Jan 2011

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“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.” ~ Galatians 6:1-5

It seems like everyone I talk to these days is struggling under a load that isn’t theirs, myself included.  It might be some little thing, like worrying about what someone else will do when you have no control over the other person’s actions.  Or trying to make everyone happy in an impossible situation.  Or trying to convince an unbelieving heart about the realness of God.  Or feeling responsible for someone’s death.

That last one is mine.

Sometimes, like last night, I feel so responsible for the illness that claimed my husband’s life.  I get caught in the “what ifs” and feel the whirlpool pull my thinking in.
What if I hadn’t encouraged him to play in the game where he got the meningitis virus…
What if I had gotten him to the hospital faster…
What if I had prayed harder…
What if I had been a better Christian…
then maybe none of this would have happened.

Now, I know that isn’t reality.  I know that humanly we did everything possible and spiritually we prayed as hard as we could.  I know that Job 14:5 says that man’s days are numbered and that God has set limits we cannot exceed.  And what I know most of all is that God isn’t the one trying to drag me down with this awful feeling – God is not giving me a weight to carry around that isn’t mine.

Paul seems to be telling us two different things in today’s passage from Galatians.  First, in verse 2, he says to carry each other’s burdens.  Then in verse 5, he seems to say the opposite, when he states that each should carry his own load.  I believe that Paul is speaking of two different types of burdens.

In verse 2, when he says we should carry one another’s, he is still talking about restoring a person who has sinned.  But that doesn’t mean taking on the guilt of their actions, it means taking responsibility to help restore them to Christ.  Notice I said help – you can’t do it for someone.

Going on to verse 5, Paul says we should each take pride in carrying our own load.  Now, that doesn’t mean we are never allowed to ask anyone for help.  As a single mom, I am learning the lesson that I need to ask for help all the time.  But ultimately, the responsibility for my son’s care falls on my shoulders.  And that’s okay, because it is what God has entrusted me with.  I am proud to be a mom and, with God’s help, will do the best that I can.

Those are the two kinds of burdens we are supposed to carry, but I think so often Satan tempts us to pile on all kinds of luggage that doesn’t belong to us.  We try to do all the things I mentioned at the beginning, thinking that somehow it’s helping us.  What it’s actually doing is dragging us down and preventing us from doing a good job with what God has given us to do.

So as you go about your week, offer a helping hand to those who need it, share Christ’s love with others and pray for those God lays on your heart.  Work hard at the tasks God has given you, no matter how big or small.  But don’t lump on emotional baggage that doesn’t belong to you – let God handle that.  He’s the only one who can.

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