all the heavy hard

If I could just not feel like a failure that would be good. That would be such a nice change of pace. I have struggled with not being okay for decades. Decades. And that is just not fair. I sound like such a baby. I’m just so tired. Why does healing take so long?

Why can’t I just be better already? This inner battle has ruined me. It has made me a bad friend, parent, wife. Why can’t I just be even keeled and patient? I am so angry and frustrated- most of the time. I think I am worse as a person as I ever have been.

I’ve looked back at my childhood traumas. I’ve forgiven. I’ve prayed. I’ve searched for meaning and tried and decades have passed and I am still so stupidly needy for your affirmation and admiration and I don’t even know you.

I need a stranger to tell me that I am okay or good or something significant to be those things. Not my husband though. Or my friend. Or Jesus because I just can’t believe them. I’m broken. There is something wrong with me and I just cannot figure out what it is and frankly, I am just so tired of trying to figure it out.

I try. I work hard. I delve and listen and read and try and nothing. Just more words inside my head. I am no different. I am still a mess. No better. In fact all these decades of all this work leaves me more frustrated than ever. Makes me angry. Makes me worse than I was before.

And here I am. Unable to really change. Unable to really be enough. Unable to really believe. And done. Lord, I think I am just done. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know where it takes me. I know that for decades I have been trying to be okay. Satisfied. Enough. And I am still none of those things.

I also know- somehow- that for the decades and all the time before and for all the time after- You, Lord. The God who made everything- have been and will always be faithful. And for me. And I don’t really know how I can hold on to this as truth and feel the way that I feel today but there it is.

This. Is. All. I’ve. Got.

And then it is not. Hope slips up into my limbs from my dry ground like dew covering so much grass. There was nothing and then there was so much. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. Sometimes feelings lie. Like the devil. Like my hungry stomach. Like my woman body. Like my sleepy head. Like my fears. Like my weary soul.

Lord, take all of this. I lay it down. These worries for my kids. For my marriage. For all the heavy hard in the world. How I never feel good enough. Your work on the cross made me good enough. Not anything I do or have done. None of it. You answer all my prayers. I know you have healed me. The ashes proof of so much fire. I trust in Your Holy love. I do. I’m just tired Lord. I know that You know it and that You can handle my weary whiny messiness.

You are Lord. You are Lord. You are Lord. Jesus and I put my trust in You.