December 2, 2018
Ever felt a little beat down? Overcome with a mile-long to-do list? Exhausted by seemingly-endless days? It sucks. It really does. In the last few weeks leading to the end of the semester and finals, I can, without a doubt, relate to all of those things. Life gets hard. Responsibilities pile up. Time flies by. However, some of my most stressful seasons of life have taught me the most important things about myself, one being that I tend to rely on my own self before I rely on God and the other being the vitality of taking it one day at a time. Let me begin by stressing the importance of never letting anybody minimize your own struggles. Your problems are your problems and just because someone feels that they are trivial in the scheme of life makes them no less of an issue. Please don’t ever feel guilty for feeling overwhelmed or worked up; it’s natural. In fact, it is just plain human. It is okay to have seasons of worry. You are undoubtedly going to have them; the reason I am writing this blog is to say that, by no means, do those seasons need to define your worth, purpose on Earth, or life overall. Seasons of trial strengthen and develop our character. Thus, I am here to share what I have gained through mine. First, I’ve talked about this many times before, but my tendency to want control over my life persists. I would love to say that I always think about what God wants for my life before I think of what I want for it, but I can’t. My natural instinct is to consistently think of my plans before His will for me. I mean, how unfair of me is it to deny the plans of the God of the universe who wants solely to have a personal relationship with me? Yet, I still do it a lot of the time. It is a daily battle of mine to give over control to the Lord. I write the phrase “I give you my words, thoughts, and actions today to You” down almost every single time I journal in hopes that the more times I say those things over my mind and my heart, I would follow them in action. I have learned the key to not allowing my seasons of stress to define my worth is by handing them to God, by laying them at the feet of Jesus. The burden of life was plainly just never meant for us to face; the holy and perfect Garden of Eden was created with the intent of it remaining holy and perfect. Yet, sin perpetuated the world, and now, it is only human instinct to grudge through life with heavy hearts. People, Jesus wants a better life than that for us. He doesn’t want us to dread the tasks of the day when we wake up or wallow in self-pity over our issues. He openly invites us to welcome Him into our days with a lightness of love and joy that He promises will provide us hope. Therefore, I invite you to join my daily battle of giving over my day to Jesus. It’s His in fact, and I simply need to start recognizing it as that. We don’t have to do life on our own. The second thing I have learned from tough seasons is the vitality of taking it one day at a time. As a person whose tendency is to forward-think and get overwhelmed with tons of work to do, I consistently have to tell my own brain: “just get through today.” You see, we create unnecessary stress for ourselves by not only worrying about what I have to get done today, but also within the next few weeks. It’s silly because worrying about the tasks doesn’t allow me to get them done faster. The Bible says: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27, NIV). Therefore, why in the world do we stress so much? It isn’t helping you or me. However, it happens, and again, we can’t beat ourselves up for it. To move forward from allowing worry or stress to consume our thoughts and days, we need to practice the intentionality that is imperative to taking life day-by-day. It’s a hard process, but the outcome that ensues is a life unbound by worry and stress of what is to come in the future.
My goal in writing this blog is that you would begin to self-diagnose how you handle the hard seasons in your life. We all have different tendencies in dealing with stress, and to overcome worry itself, we first have to recognize how well, or how poorly, we are treating it. It is a daily choice to not allow the hard parts of life to outshine the beautiful. Lean into your own heart and God’s will for you this week and see how you can move forward in the daily battle it is to live a life filled with hope, joy, and love, all in the face of the world’s brokenness. I am with you in the battle.
With love,
C