“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight “ Proverbs 3:5-6
I have been studying this verse the past few months and as I have been studying it I’m looking back at my life and reflecting. What I came to realize is over the years growing up a believer I knew who God was and I knew of all the amazing things he’s done and the miracles he continues to work in peoples lives. But, I never truly allowed him to work in my life. I had myself convinced that I needed to be the one to figure things out, it was up to me to make things happen in my life. From figuring out a career for myself to even raising children, I immersed myself in podcasts and books trying to learn and “figure out” how to be a parent. When difficult times in parenting or my health came up I started researching, trying to find answers to my problems.
Putting all this pressure on myself to perform and figure things out was exhausting and you know what not only physically but mentally it takes a toll on a person. Who do we blame when things go wrong, don’t work out or go as planned. We blame ourselves because it was up to us and we failed.
Living this way is hard, the shame and guilt gets to a person after a while.
Quite a few years into adulting and parenting I made the decision to fully surrender my life to Christ. I was tired of doing life on my own, tired of the struggles, the shame, the guilt and honestly the confusion and frustration of doing this thing we call life.
I made a public promise in front of my Church family and I made a promise to myself no more “figuring it out” ultimately it’s not up to me because the man upstairs he’s already got it all figured out.
Now I didn’t just change my way of living immediately but I started to change my habits and my mindset so I could allow God to lead more. I committed to more consistent prayer. The Bible tells us in (Philippians 4:6-7) “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”. So I did, I had more conversations with him about what was troubling me in life, what I needed guidance on, what clarity and wisdom I needed when it came to parenting and I talked to him first before making decisions.
You know what as I started living this way life became smoother. Not easy! God doesn’t promise to take our problems away but he does promise to be with us in and through them. It sounds crazy but drawing closer to God through prayer and his word gave me this inner peace in life even though life was full of unknowns and trials. Boy am I grateful I had God with me, this past year we felt called to build a home in another state from which we lived and then moved our family across the country to live in that new home in a new land. We kinda felt like Abraham when God called him to a new land and through Abrahams obedience he was blessed by God.
Doing life with God made finding a new church, new friends, and a new job so much less stressful because the pressure was off of us. All we had to do was listen and obey and God has poured his blessings on us each time we do so.
I share all this for a reason. I was studying the verse I mentioned from proverbs while doing the Megan Fate book and Bible study called ”Relaxed”. While reading her book and study I realized life is more relaxed when we do life with God. As I was thinking back over my life the past year as I loosened the reigns and surrendered control to him rather than putting life in my hands, things felt less stressful. Life moved along with this sense of ease and peace. Yes I still have days that feel overwhelming or hard because as a parent we are going to have tough days. Life will throw us curve balls, we have disagreements, difficulties, stress but we also always have God and the more we lean on him the less pressure and stress we put on ourselves to fix the hard things that come up in life.
“When we are leaning on His understanding, we can relax. When we are leaning on our own understanding, we are going to run around frantically trying to figure out everything on our own.” Megan Fate
Megan couldn’t have said it better! So I share this because I know as moms we tend to feel overwhelmed and frantic in mom life trying to balance life’s demands, parent our kids well, be involved in our church or community and be a child of God. It’s a lot, life is hard, exhausting and overwhelming but what I learned is the more I run to God in those hard moments of mom life the more peace I felt. Living a relaxed life is much more fulfilling and enjoyable than living frantically and stressed out.
Life can feel stressful and overwhelming and in those times we can run to God open our hands and invite him into our mess. Taking away some of the stress and pressure to do it all on our own for figure things out. Let him do it for us and live a more relaxed mom life. Doing this can bring inner peace to you as a mom and you’re also modeling to your children that they can run to God when life feels hard for them too. Inviting Christ into our lives for the good, the bad and the ugly is the best thing we can do to make this life on earth less overwhelming and more fulfilling! Put your trust in Him and He will be there by your side guiding you along every step of life on earth.