10 WAYS TO CAST YOUR BURDENS

As many of you know my wife and I endured the pain of losing our first child, Adalee, in the fall of last year. Up until then, I had experienced the pain of losing family members throughout the years, but this process came with an entirely different wave of emotions and heartache. The child I had prayed for who was allowing me to be a father, would go to be with Jesus forever on August 18th, 2020.

After receiving the news that our daughter had a plethora of medical problems we endured a 30-day window of doctor visits. Each week was filled with questions, which I had no answers for, and anxiousness in my stomach that kept me up at night. With scriptures of healing plastered throughout our home, throughout the hallways, and scattered all over our refrigerator, there was great expectation and faith that began to swell in our hearts amid the pain. Abby and I both have seen God do the miraculous and will never, ever stop believing in the God of miracles who heals and restores. His name is Jehovah Rapha, our healer, and our trust forever remains in Him. Therefore there was no convincing us to bow down in discouragement hoping for the worse, our approach was the contrary. We stood, prayed, believed, and contended in faith. As you can see this was a month full of what I would refer to as a whirlwind. A whirlwind filled with hope and confusion all at the same time.

Some days our faith was strong, other days not so strong. Some days we prayed for hours, and some days we couldn’t find the words to pray. As I’m sure you could guess by now this was the most difficult season of our lives, yet the lessons we would learn throughout the journey have been what’s sustained us on the other side. Did Adalee receive her physical healing on earth? Did our testimony unfold as we expected it to? No, not exactly and oftentimes people ask me how we got through it, maybe expecting my response to be super spiritual and full of heroic answers and solutions. Rather, I tend to reply with vulnerable transparency which is why I wrote this blog. Let us never forget that as our honesty and vulnerability with Jesus increase, so does His embrace. He does not find delight in your performance-based, religious, hyped-up language. He only desires your shattered heart at His feet. He wants the real thing and the real you.

Below you will find 10 practical ways you can cast your burdens upon the Lord in your anxiety. I have not read these out of a book, nor have I googled the following list. This list contains the super practical tools I used to endure the pain of giving my daughter over to the Lord. There is no secret formula or hyped-up secret as to how we are to go through pain. I would like to suggest it’s rather the simple, everyday consistency of choosing trust and practicing biblical principles that we come out on the other side with a testimony. After all, Jesus didn’t avoid pain by going around it, He went right through it. He realized it was never His will, but the will of His Father in heaven coming to pass.

1. Make an intentional decision every single day to choose trust.

Trusting the Lord is easier said than done, although faith is found in surrender, not striving. His ways are not our ways.

2. Surrender your strength - Resting in His wisdom brings peace.

You are not supposed to figure it out. Some things are beyond your control. Admit your limitations and His infinite strength.

3. Remind yourself of God’s goodness.

Time in reflection is never wasted time.

4. Refuse to allow negative opinions to exist from the outside in.

You cannot share everything with everybody. Not everyone needs to see your wounds.

5. Worries and anxiety belong at the feet of Jesus.

Take them there, and leave them there. Get your heart above your head.

6. Whatever we hide, never gets healed.

Anxiety lingers in the dark. Light brings illumination.

7. Rest assured that joy IS coming in the morning.

He never promised it would be easy. He just promised to never leave us, nor forsake us.

8. Spinning your wheels never fixes anything.

Take a break and take a rest. Rest RESTores the mind to RESToration.

9. Irrigate your mind with a fresh perspective. Wise counsel is necessary and essential.

10. Worship and the word feeds, nurtures, and sustains us.

Two primary ingredients.