The Bible tells us to cast all our cares upon God, because HE cares about us. Each need, each praise, each fear, doubt, worry, all the heaviness and the joy are to be given to God. God is better able to deal with it than we are. God wants to take the pain from us, and make our lives easier. God loves us tremendously. We live in a fallen world, full of pain, sorry, fear, doubt, disease and God hates that. But this is how it is, because God graciously gave us free will and this is what we choose. It does not mean that HE isn't in control, quite to the contrary. It just means that HE is allowing us to reap the consequences of our decisions. And the consequences suck.
God invites us to give all our pain to HIM, yet how often do we really do that? How often do we totally surrender our pain, fear, sorrow, etc. to HIM? Is there a part of us, the fallen part, that relishes in the pain? Do we feel like it makes us more human? Or is it maybe a lack of faith, we don't give it to HIM because we don't believe that HE will deal with it, and will take care of us?
For whatever reasons we have, we tend to hang on to our pains. I know that I am not always as good as I'd like to be at totally surrendering to God. I love God, HE means everything to me, and I can't put into mere words just how amazing I find it that HE went to the cross for me, and that HE does so much for me every moment. Yet, even though I am totally grateful, I still don't always act upon that.
In times like this, when I'm dealing with something that completely sucks and is well, s**ty, I am not the best at giving it to God. I wish could. I wish I could save myself the pain and give it up. I really do. Yet, the spirit is willing and my flesh is weak. My sin nature wants to keep it. Use it as an excuse for other things. But that is wrong.
I'm a person of action, I like to do things to make this world better. While I admit that I do cry, I find that for me it isn't that productive. Because after the tears the situation is still the same. Crying may help some people, but they don't for me. That is not how I cope. I cope by doing, by praying, by helping others, by listening to others. Sometimes I cope by denial.
Denial is not the healthiest form of coping, eventually the truth comes out, trust me! Yet, in the short term it is necessary sometimes. So is compartmentalizing, not denying that events happened, but putting them away to be dealt with at a more feasible time. This is taught by the military, for many people going into combat situations.
Right now I guess I need to pray about things, because there isn't too much I can do. I know that prayer is a BIG thing, it is talking to GOD, yet the "helper" in me, the person that needs to be there with the people I love when they are struggling, wants to do more. I cope by focusing on what needs to be done and doing that. When I'm cut off from being able to do that, I feel adrift. So I need to pray and remind myself to anchor into God. I need to remind myself to give it to God, because HE is really the only one that can do anything about this anyway, so why not anchor into the solution?
-JLK/PRT-
No comments:
Post a Comment