When I walk outside, into the wilderness, there is a calm that lingers around me. It's my place to breathe deeply. It slows the millions of thoughts racing around my head. It clears the fog so I can think/see clearly. and it opens up a side of me that I long for each and every day that is not spent in these woods. My thoughts stretch, my imagination widens, and my heart expands in the wake of fresh air. In this wilderness, there are things I've learned to let go of, habits to pick up, and songs, which have been buried for ages, that I had forgotten were placed in me at my beginning. This place of freedom, however little I get to venture to it, helps me unbind the wild within me, the childlike heart I left behind.
and I need that wild-side this week. I need a new perspective. I need the calm and the clarity. and when I listened to everyone groan in agreement about this week, I realized that we all could use some wild freedom.
In a week filled with deadlines and exams and gravitational waves being discovered, I feel like I'm being pulled in a thousand different directions. and it's easy for me to believe that everything is out of control. More often then not, I tend to put school work and relationships in priority over myself, which leaves me with messy hair and a room that LIGO could classify as a blackhole. and for an introvert like me, it gets overwhelming quickly. and it'd be easy for me to say that it's just this week, otherwise my life is totally balanced and everything is awesome (insert big red bow with a smile on top here).
but that's not real life.
Real life is busy. And there are a million and one choices you could make, should make, would make. Each choice puts you further down one road and farther from another. They can lead you to people, to yourself, to the world, or to Jesus. Sometimes it's impossible to tell which one will lead you where until you're halfway down the road. They can overtake your life. and it can start to feel like you can't breathe. Like your hands are tied. Like you just. can't. carry. anymore. Can I let you in on a little secret that my friend shared with me today?
It's okay to not carry it all. It's okay not to be everything for everyone. It's okay to take care of yourself.
Life has a way of beating out of us the things that we were wired for. The things that bring us joy and rest. We begin to believe that we have to run this race as fast as we can for as long as we can with as much stuff in our hands as we can because that's what makes you successful. But that's not what God has required of us.
"...let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith...." Hebrews 12:1-2
It's not a dead sprint. and you were never meant to carry all that weight and sin. I've been carrying fear, shame, and people-pleasing in my buckets for too long [& picking up extra loads of those on weeks like this one]. and though they seem like old friends, I have to let them go.
It's time to unbind the wild within us. To let Jesus come alongside and take the things we're carrying around. to put ourselves at the top of our priority list. to be okay with not being okay. and to breathe deeply of the mountain air.
There is clarity in the unbinding. but more than anything: there is freedom.
So go ahead. I'm letting you off the hook today. Let Jesus take the weight and run free and wild like the child you used to be.
Em
No comments:
Post a Comment