Holding on Tightly

Sometimes we hold things so closely that we don’t see them change over time. Maybe it’s a painful childhood or a bitter divorce or angry words spoken at some distant place in the past. Maybe it’s how wonderful Christmas was as a child, despite the fact that you grew up pitifully poor. Or maybe even something as simple as how much greener the grass was or how much bluer the sky was when we were younger.

Holding on to something so tightly and holding them so close to your heart can hide the corners or the details of the memories of the event.

That’s how it is when we’re carrying a burden we need to forgive so we can let go of it. Even when the burden is something you need to forgive yourself for – as time passes, the burden gets heavier and becomes more destructive.

Today, are you able to take that bundle that you’re holding onto with a death grip and pull it away from our heart long enough to take a look at it? How clearly could you even see it, if you did?

Often, a mother will snuggle her newborn so closely – she’s used to that child being inside of her; now she holds them in her arms. What felt like a part of her for 40 weeks is now a more independent little person she can snuggle and love in a very different way. Eventually she pulls them up in front of her to admire and take delight in.

With treasures and burdens that we carry around like that, we don’t always make the time to pull them away from our heart long enough to look at them, whether to admire or to curse them.

We just carry them, never allowing them to evolve or change though feeling the weight grow heavier over time. Imagine the damage to both that mother and her child, if 10 years later she insisted on carrying them everywhere, all the time.

Today, if we sit down with God in prayer and ask Him to help us take a look at our burdens, we can discover great and wonderful things, and we may have to take a look at hard, painful things.

But knowing we’re not alone for that big reveal, and every time we dare to peek, will bring healing to us and lighten the burden. We may have to look at it little by little, or we may be able to take it in all at once. We’re all different, and every bundle we carry is different.

We may see that it’s uglier than we remember, or that it’s not nearly as scary as we remember. We may see that a beautiful memory is hiding something behind it that we’d rather not see, so we cling to that good thought – but it still becomes a burden; a hiding place.

My whole point today is to tell you that you don’t have to do it alone.

God is ALWAYS with you. He has ALWAYS been with you. He’ll walk through this with you. He’ll lighten the burden, He’ll heal the wounds, and He’ll bring His joy into your heart…if you let Him.

He will bring the right people at the right time to sit with you and pray with you and cry with you and laugh with you. And as crazy as it may sound to some, that person might not even be a Christian. God can and will use any of us.

And He’ll always forgive first. He won’t ask you to do what He won’t do.

Our first step is inviting Him into the situation. He’ll take the next step.

Pride may come before a fall, but humility comes before healing.