The Need to let go...

By Rebecca Vickery
 “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30
I have this tendency to take on other people’s burdens.  This can be a good thing in some ways.  After all, we are supposed to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), so it seems good for me to do that.  I am lightening the burden for someone else by hearing them, coming alongside them. But then I keep their burdens.  I fret about them.  I try to figure out ways to fix the burden for the person.  Sounds great, right?  Except I can actually do very little to help people out of their burdens.  Sure, I can help with tangible things.  But I can do very little to help people with their real burdens; the things that weigh so heavy on the soul.  I hold onto them and feel their weight. 
I take on my children’s burdens, my husband’s burdens, my friends’ burdens.  And keep them.
At the same time, I have my own burdens to bear.  Inability to lose weight.  Basing my value on a number on a scale or a size.  Chronic health battles leading to battles with insurance companies.  Not finding my worth in the decisions and outcomes of those same insurance companies.  Marital struggles.  Struggles with loneliness.  Unmet connection needs.  The list goes on. 
Sometimes I can get lost in the fray.  I lose sleep trying to figure out ways to fix things.  My things.  Other people’s things.  To help.  And sure, I pray.  I pray about those things and ask God to take care of them.  I give them to Jesus.  And then upon finding these problems not instantly fixed, I take them back so that I can worry about them some more. 
The struggle is real. 
In my family, we play on those words and say, “the struggle of Israel.”  In this case, it is literally like the struggle of Israel.  Jacob wrestled with the Angel of the Lord (the LORD, it later says), and His hip was wrenched in the fight.  He wrestled ALL night long.  Imagine what it would have been like for Jacob (Israel) if he simply stopped wrestling.  He might have gotten to sleep.  Maybe his hip wouldn’t have been wrenched in the process.  Maybe we’re not meant to win that kind of wrestling.  How often have I wrestled with an issue that I’ve brought to God, and played tug of war holding so tightly that I just end up keeping it as a burden, when I could have found rest for my soul?
In the past few years, I have been learning to actually give these things to God more readily.  I have actively sought to recognize the things I’ve held onto for so long when I should have let go.  God has allowed me to see how holding on has taken a toll.  Gradually, my fingers have released their death grip on the burden I’m holding. 
Some of us have held onto certain burdens for far too long.  The process of learning to let go can be painful.  But we were never meant to bear these burdens alone.  And in some cases, we were not meant to bear them at all.
“Come to me.”  We are meant to come to Jesus with our heavy burdens.  I have been weary and heavy laden for far too long.  I have been anxious about many things.  But I want to take up the yoke of Jesus and learn from Him.  I want to be gentle and humble in heart.  I want to be able to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily (way more easily than I care to admit) entangles.  I want to untangle myself from the burdens I am holding and give them over to the One who is more than able to bear the weight of them.  And I want to find rest for my soul that only comes from surrender.