Photo by Zac Ong
This has been one of the most difficult times in my life and it caught me by surprise. By all accounts, this should be an exciting and happy time as Carrie and I just built a beautiful custom home, one on which we have been working over the past two years. It has been a long but enjoyable journey, and the pieces came together in beautiful ways, confirming our decision each step along the way. Yet this past few months have been filled with difficulty.
Carrie and I have walked through painful and stressful waters before. During recent years, the magnitude of them has been amplified. We have lost loved ones, left a church that we called home for a decade, graduated kids from high school, and helped launch them to college and into adulthood. In addition, we have helped friends and family walk through hard times. In it all, God has been gracious and we have felt and relied on His strength and peace along the way. Until now.
It’s not that this was the most difficult thing we have endured. Yet it was the breaking point. As I try to process what happened, I simply believe I tried to carry too much. It seemed as if everything depended on me, so I worked hard and long. I did this for so long that It was hard to turn it off and hard to quit. I worked at my office each day, and then I worked at home at night, on breaks and on weekends. There was an endless supply of things to do.
I did too much without relying on or trusting others. I unintentionally became my own god. And I crashed. I ran out of strength and I ran out of joy. I was completely depleted and running on empty. I was mad and I was sad. I was lonely and I was tired. I didn’t know how I got on this path and I didn’t know how to get off it. Carrie endured, but was tired of my state.
I had no place carrying such a burden. But we shoulder what we can and do our part. We use the strength that we have and do our best. I realized that I struggled to let that be enough. I struggled to lay my work at God’s feet each day and to trust Him to watch over it and to bless it. I struggled to put my trust in Him as God. My effort and work became the center of my days and life rather than Jesus at the center of it all.
Today, I invited Him back to the center where He belongs.