Boxing like one beating the air...

Throughout the past month, our family has gone through some difficult times. Most importantly, two relatives passed away within nearly three weeks of each other. One was especially dear to me. After we received news of his death, I tried to fight all of the emotions, feelings, attitudes, etc. that accompany such a loss. I felt like as if I couldn’t continue on with my life if I “succumbed” to these repercussions; I thought I had to rise above them. Because of the first death, we were away from home for more than a week. School started piling up and I had to request an extension on my homework dates. Once we got back, I tried to fit back into my normal routine. School was going fine, but I didn’t have the same motivation as I did prior to leaving. It seemed pointless. I started being moody and lethargic when it came to my tasks. I couldn’t figure out why things weren’t going smoothly. Sure, I was getting things done, but what was the point?
I fought all of this for a couple weeks until the final blow connected and knocked me out cold onto the canvas.

I didn’t like it.

It gave me time to think, though. The more I thought about things, the more I realized I was drifting away in my relationship with God. Maybe I was still the same old person when it came to my actions, but my motivations for doing things were different, and I certainly wasn’t reading my Bible daily. I was fighting things that I shouldn’t have been fighting. I came out swinging at these occurrences in my life because I thought I had to in order to maintain my composure. Not only did I walk into the ring with the wrong attitude, I walked in there by myself. In fact, walking in was a bad decision in the first place.

There are some things in life that we can fight, and when we do we should go in there and fight knowing that we are not alone. But there are also some things that we cannot change, things we cannot deal with on our own. It was revealed to me that I just wasn’t giving this up to God. Maybe sometime in the past I had asked for strength, but then again my view was that I had to fight this…alone.

Life is wonderful once you come to realize that God is sovereign. Sometimes we step into the ring and start fighting, only to be knocked down because of the fact that we deserve it. Once you’re at the bottom you can actually see how foolish it was for you to fight in the first place and how wise it would have been to give certain things over to God. Everything happens for a reason and when I look back at this series of events, I can say that I am thankful that some things happened when they did. If they had happened in some other order over a long period of time, I cannot say that they would have had the same effect. Worship is all that I am responding to all that He is, and that includes His sovereignty.

“But those who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength…”