Faithfully Thinking: When it feels unnatural to not worry and ruminate but you stop doing it anyhow

I didn’t feel like writing a post about trusting God this week but I did it anyway.

There are times it feels unnatural to let go of a situation and walking in the knowledge that you cannot fix that situation.

Sometimes it feels impossible to let God take care of something, even though we know he is the only one who can.

I’m going through that now.

I have gone through it before.

I will also go through it again.

I believe there are times we have to do what feels unnatural in our walk with Christ.

Natural for me is to lay awake and worry.

Natural for me is to try to fix it – whatever it is.

Natural for me is to manipulate a situation so I can fix it in my own power.

More times than not, trying to fix a situation on my own has resulted in disaster.

This week I am in a battle of the mind.

When I start to ruminate on an issue we are having as a family this week, I have been trying to tell myself to stop and that God will handle this situation. Sometimes it has worked and sometimes (like part of today) it has not.

Instead of lying awake in bed or walking around the house writing my hands, I have picked up a book, taught a kid a school lesson, watched a funny old show, cooked, or made myself a cup of tea and taken ten minutes to slowly sip it.

Am I succeeding in letting God take control of my situation this week?.

Sometimes I am. Sometimes I am not.

The last three days I have been anxious and paced, rolled over at night a few times, stared at the ceiling, and overthought a bunch – but I have done all of those things less than I usually have when life is stressful and I call that progress. Slow progress but still progress.

I’m not going to lie — It has felt like I’m doing something wrong by not worrying or ruminating or trying to figure it all out.

It has felt like I am not my normal self.

Sometimes, though, in certain situations, being our normal self is exactly what God doesn’t want us to do.

He doesn’t want us to be our normal anxiety-ridden self.

He doesn’t want us to have a God-complex and think that we can do what only he can do.

He wants us to know that he is in control, even when we don’t understand what he is doing.

All this could change tomorrow, but, hopefully, I will remember that even if it feels unnatural to trust and place my worries in his hands, I need to do that because God is God and I am not.