At the beginning of this past school year, my roommate and I hung up some cheap globe string lights. We definitely jumped the gun on decorating considering that our dorm has no air conditioning and the August humidity makes it hard for anything to stay on the walls. Inevitably, a lot of the bulbs fell and shattered within a few days. We eventually gave up and just threw the whole set away, but we kept finding little shards of cheap glass in the floor throughout the year. They had somehow invaded the whoooole room.
As I pulled a trillionth shard out of a box while unpacking my stuff for the summer, I couldn’t help but consider how ridiculous it is that we didn’t just vacuum the entire floor immediately and buy a new, more sturdy set of lights to hang when the humidity settled down. Instead, we picked the pieces up one by one as we found them between August and May. The worst part was that we used a dim lamp as a light source when a set of bulbs would have made it considerably more comfortable.
I guess you could confront me about sloth (definitely part of my problem here hahaha), but I’m really getting at the fact that sometimes we make ourselves miserable by living right in the midst of our mess. When something is weighing me down, I push it aside over and over instead of taking it to God until I’m suffocating beneath its heaviness.
Don’t we all tend to medicate with movement, going & doing & chasing because we’re too afraid to stop, stoop, and clean up our deeper hurts? I live in months (or years) of messiness when I could find freedom in a few minutes of surrender. Don’t take this literally, because a simple prayer is not a guarantee for immediate healing. That would be like claiming that a homeowner can clean his or her house one thorough round and call it good for the year. The truth is that we have to keep pulling out the vacuum.
Maybe surrender isn’t just a posture of hands open to God but also dukes up to the devil (James 4:7)? This is a battle I choose to fight because I know that what He has for me is better than both my mess and the idols that serve to distract me from facing it.
Freedom and surrender are not in opposition because submission to the Lord is the ultimate freedom. Stop running and take your mess to God (and maybe even to counseling & good friends & self-care) because who wants to walk around with shards of glass in their feet??
Hiding is not conducive to healing. You are never too far from grace, so step into the light. God sent Jesus to earth in human flesh to step right into our messes, and he cares deeply about yours.
maddie shay dyer 