If you’ve been following our family journey over the last few months, you’ll know that it’s been pretty intense around here. I’ve been learning a lot about what it means to trust God and to lean on other people.
There are many more details that I won’t go into here, but the biggest thing I’m having to learn is how to let go. Most of last year I spent learning to hand my children over to God, time after time. I still must do this daily. The last three months have been about learning how to share my burdens.
We’ve experienced unexpected generosity in the form of groceries, gift cards and in numerous other ways. This hasn’t always been easy to accept. To be honest, I prefer to be the helper rather than the helped. But in this instance, I have very little choice.
Sometimes the weight of life is simply too much. It may be a financial struggle like we are going through right now or it may simply be the heaviness of a broken world, which has a way of slowly eroding our joy and zest for life
When life feels full of pain and frustration, whether our own or others', we begin to feel beaten down with discouragement. But we were never meant to carry this alone. Click To Tweet
Accept What You Cannot Control (Hint: That’s Almost Everything!)
One of the hardest struggles for me, and most especially for my husband, has been the realization of how little control we have over our lives. Many of us get used to feeling like we can guide the events of our lives through good decision making and proper planning. This can be true, to a point, but the truth is sometimes crap just happens. You can make all the right choices in life and still find yourself in a rough spot. Accepting that sometimes you can’t prevent bad things from happening allows you to let go of the burden of being in charge of making everything go right.
Ask for Help and Delegate
Asking for help is ridiculously difficult for so many of us. But sometimes what we have to carry really is too much and we must share it or find ourselves drowned beneath it’s weight. Since my husband has been home more lately, I’ve been asking for his help. When I go to my regular babysitting gig, he does school with the children. He handles dinner more often than he used to, simply because he is there. My mother watches my littlest once a week when I’m working.
It’s made me realize that there are way too many things that only I can do. Which means that in the season ahead I may have to restructure my life in order to hand off more as I take on other, new kinds of responsibilities.
Talk to Someone
Sometimes the best way to lighten a burden is to share it with someone else. I don’t mean sit down for a good complain. It can be healthy to share our frustrations and venting is helpful, but constant complaining does nothing but make our situation more difficult.
We also need to carefully pick our audience. In times of trial, you need someone who will speak positive truth to you, not feed your cycle of negativity. Practical advice is appreciated but sometimes what is most helpful is encouragement and emotional support. Whether it’s a friend, or a professional counselor or psychologist finding someone to help you talk through your struggles is crucially important to maintaining mental and emotional health during times of high stress.
As humans, we are designed for connected living. We aren’t meant to try and function completely alone. This is highlighted most in our attempts to carry our own burdens. I also couldn’t complete this without mentioning that as a person of faith, the one I ultimately lay my burdens on is Jesus. While the people in my life are surely being his hands and feet, he is the only one who can lift my emotional burden. I remind myself daily that when the load feels too heavy, I can lay it on him. I aspire to a day when I can experience his supernatural peace even in the midst of outer and inner chaos of body and soul.
Praying that God will lighten your burdens!
so good we have a saviour eh? One that will help. visiting from FMF 53
Talking to others is so important.