Encouragement

How Do You Struggle with Life?

I came to a jarring realization two days ago–a positive aspect of my DNA has become a negative. And I am struggling with life.

I have always loved to ponder about people and life. I have written about this before and I believe we must ponder (give consideration to, pray about) to love others well (our husband, children, friends). 

But pondering people and situations with optimism, reflection, and hope has turned to struggling with pessimism, panic, and despair. How did this happen? How do you keep from crossing the line between pondering about life to struggling with life?

Two words: trust or control.

Trust: reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety of a person.

Control: to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.

Two more words: God or me.

This jarring revelation came to me through a Beth Moore study we are doing at work called Entrusted. Needless to say there is a lot in the study about trust. And I am not doing it. I am not trusting God in my pondering. Instead I am struggling for control. It’s me against God and, no surprise, I am losing.

There are a myriad of reasons why we don’t trust God with the people we love or the situations we are in. If you are struggling with trust, stop to consider how and deal with it. I can’t help you do that but I can share with you what I discovered about my lack of trust. 

I don’t want to wait.

If someone I love is hurting, if there is a situation I might have a solution for, I want to jump in and fix it. And if it doesn’t work, I feel like I need to try again. Let me direct your attention back to the definitions above. I try to take control. I take direction over the situation and dominate. Instead of trusting in the strength and surety of God.

What does trust look like? 

Well, according to my independent, but prompted by the Beth Moore study, it may look like 40 days. Maybe not always 40 but the point is it may take time. God’s time. I have to be still and wait. The 40-day examples are fascinating, though. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. Moses was up on the mountain getting the 10 commandments for 40 days. Noah was on the ark for 40 days. Goliath taunted David for 40 days. There are many more–Google it. All of these people were in difficult situations where they had to wait without taking action on their own for 40 days. I don’t like to wait 40 minutes!

These examples of trust versus control–God versus me–pondering about situations versus struggling to fix situations have taught me that trust means I need to give God more time.

How are you struggling with life and what lesson have you learned about it?

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