It feels like death, my throat closes as oxygen is forced through a narrow opening. My stomach rises and falls as surges of liquid adrenaline is released into my bloodstream … nausea, cold sweats, and heart palpitations are felt as my brain gets flooded with chemicals that stop all rational thought. I may even burst out in tears as fears, worries, and injustice’s fill my mind. These thoughts crush my peace and I search frantically to make sense or bring them to a navigable and peaceful conclusion.
When you’re in the midst of doing a hard thing, it feels like you’re pressing into death.
Hard Things.
Pressing through past trauma, setting healthy boundaries, burying loved ones, walking away from abuse, watching as your child leaves home, losing a job, or getting a phone call that changed the way of life as you knew it … this life has too many hard things. Hard moments, hard realizations, hard outcomes, and in turn can impose a hardening of one’s heart.
How do we live when we feel like death is taking over our health, our family, our finances … our peace?
Friend, as hard as this is to accept … you must not resist death, rather allow it to flow over you. Acknowledge the parts that feel like they’re dying (dreams, seasons, memories, your story). We can hold fast to the promise that where there is death, there is new life.
A page from my journal, when God revealed the how-to …
The woods felt moist on this winter warming day. I left tracks of cracked ice as the frozen, puddled trail lead me through the forest. Well packed deer trails intercepted mine and I wondered where they lead? Curiosity in me wants to follow them, maybe stumble upon some wonderful wooded surprise.
Looking for surprises was not what led me to the woods … my heart was heavy with having to do a hard thing. I stopped at a tree covered with grey/blue fungus and began to unpack the weight … “I’m tired of doing hard things, Jesus. I’m tired of dying” … memories flood my mind as I recall being alone while pressing through past hard things … “Why am I always alone?” … because one day I will stand before Jesus alone, and after dying hundreds of deaths, there is an odd confidence in death, or rather, confident that Jesus gives new life from death.
“Jesus, how do I live through hard things?”
As I was in this honest moment with the Lord, my dog kicked up a deer … my dog ran past me gasping for air, nose focused on the jumping deer. Watching him from a distance I tried to refocus my thoughts … “As I was saying, Lord, how …” The startled deer turned and ran toward me with my dog in pursuit. Feeling frustrated with this scene, I shouted the command “LEAVE IT!" He stopped, then my dog turned and walked to me.
In that moment, an awareness to the scene washed over me - this is the way to survive death. You must leave it.
The way to survive death is to leave the death behind.
How many times have you kicked up memories, re-read emails and text messages? Chased people for attention or validation? Or stuck your nose to the ground of whatever next-best, self-help, name-it-claim-it sermon or program that assured happiness, enlightenment, or freedom from all the things that cause you stress?
We live by leaving the hard thing behind us. Leaving it is the only way you can begin to live; newly live with perspective of new hope and new life. When we leave death behind, we walk toward the resurrected God …
I’m always in awe at how quickly the disciples followed Jesus. In some ways Jesus said, “Leave it” when he petitioned them to “Follow Him” … the disciples left behind family and a life they expected. They left their home, their identity, wealth, responsibilities, and I’m sure so many more details we fail to see from our perspective.
I pray you hear God call out to you, “Leave it!” Leave the pain, the heartache, the self-condemnation – leave the burden, the weight, the expectations … leave the hard thing behind you and keep walking toward Jesus.
A prayer to help guide you …
“Jesus, thank you for Your resurrected life in me. Thank you that in You, I live and have my identity. Teach me, instruct me, and guide me in all my ways … help me to leave behind the hard things, the places where I felt death or caused another to feel death. Remind me of Your love, a love that calls out to me and brings me back to Your side.”
Keep following after Jesus,
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