Oops.
It seems that I have, probably for the hundredth time, mistakenly thought that I was about to get to a place in life where things would be easy... easy enough, that is, for me to do it by myself. I was expecting to reach this point right now and not desperately need Jesus.
Oh what a mistake. It's always such a mistake.
...Because the first half of January got me. I felt overwhelmed and I wanted to crawl under my desk and not do a single thing that apparently all need to be done at that very moment. And in the midst of this overwhelmed feeling, I thought, "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" I was angry because my expectations were inaccurate and I wasn't prepared for the way I was feeling.
Then in the midst of my midst of my frustration and dismay one week, I tuned in to the words playing on my (totally non-Christian music) Pandora station:
...Here I raise mine ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come
And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God
he to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood
Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be
let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above
I suppose I can add "impromptu rendition of my favorite hymn in the middle of a hard day" to my list of things to be thankful for...
The point is that I need grace every day. I need Jesus every day. It's to today, by His help, that I've come, and it's up to Him for me to safely arrive at my (eternal) home. But there is some prideful part of me that continues thinking that I can be independent and that I should be unless it's necessary to depend on God for something that's too hard for me to handle. That is not how life works at all, and unconsciously assessing whether I'll be able to make it through the day on my own sets me up for epic failure... or at least unnecessarily stressful days.
So today some of the responsibilities that were overwhelming me in January are completed. Others have been added to the list. But I'll be okay, because Christ's grace covers me today, like it does every day.
