Take Life Off Your Shoulders [an encouragement for the new year]
Welcome to 2020!
This week, I’m finally reentering the online world. I took about a month off from blogging and social media, and gosh, it was so, so needed. I’m excited to be back—and a little nervous.
I finished 2019 feeling worn down and weary in my soul. That’s probably not a good place to be when my aim is to help you find nourishment for yours. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting, goal setting, and praying through how to move forward in my writing, speaking, and online life. I wish I could tell you I had a vision from God telling me the next ten steps to take and exactly how to move forward in 2020.
The truth is, I don’t quite know. I don’t like not knowing. I’m still committed to the same thing I’ve been trying to do for the last year—creating recipes, sharing stories, and writing about theology to help you find nourishment for your soul. What that actually looks like for the next 12 months remains foggy. I have a lot of ideas, a thousand questions, and an offline life—including three children I’m responsible to nourish (usually in the form of snacks every half hour).
I don’t want to juggle it all. Juggling is exhausting. So is balancing. That question I hear sometimes of how to “balance it all” sounds increasingly ridiculous to me. How do you balance it all? You don’t. You can’t. The juggling has to stop. The balancing act set aside. Some things have to go.
Take Life Off Your Shoulders
Yesterday I read Paul David Tripp’s devotional, New Morning Mercies, and he said this, “You can take your life off your shoulders because God has placed it on his. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter how you live, but that your security is not found in your faithfulness, but in his…His grace calls you to invest in the one thing that will never come up short, and that one thing is the faithfulness of your Lord.”
As I think about all the things I want to invest my time, energy, and resources into this upcoming year, I find it easy to start piling more and more on my shoulders. Even if I say “no” (which I often do), sometimes I find the mental weight of that thing still hard to put down. I question if I should have said yes, feel guilty for not doing more, or feel the FOMO at full force.
But the truth is that I could strategize, use every minute wisely, invest intentionally in my family, and meet all of my goals—and I still will fall short. I can heap the weight of the world on my shoulders, believing I’m holding everything up, only to realize I’m actually being crushed.
“He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
He Is Faithful
I’m not saying this because I recommend cynicism or apathy. (I’ve tried those, too. They don’t work.) I say it because it’s so freeing. Life does not rest on your shoulders, on figuring out the perfect goals, or on making every minute count. God is faithful in every moment, which means we get to parent, work, cook, play, create, write, and live our everyday lives with the freedom and joy that flows from the grace of God. We get to do all he’s called us to do through his strength and not our own. “For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also” (Psalm 95:3-4).
He will lead, even if it’s just one step at time. He will be faithful, even if we’re not. And investing in that truth, relying on it, banking on it, centering our lives around it, will be worth it every single time.
Let’s carry that truth with us into 2020.
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
