Do you ever feel like you are treading water with all your might?
No matter how hard you try… you are certain, drowning is imminent.

If I just try a little harder…

It is a season for treading.  Treading until my legs ache and my body wants to succumb to the force of the water… to just let go.  Sometimes, the treading is mental.  Gasping for air between the needs of children, of aging parents, of friends, of others who need… not want.  I look around my life and know how I am blessed.  I know the comforts God has given me.  I see the gifts He has given me.  My gifts require loving maintenance and care.

And I feel like I am drowning.

This feeling of drowning… pretty much a self-pity party.  Why all these burdens?  Why all at the same time?  Funny, we don’t say that about the gifts.  I’ve never thought – “Oh, no, not so many gifts please.”

My whining, crying self-pity party… asking God… why is it so hard?  My parents, the pillars of strength from my youth, the models of adulthood to my child eyes.  Now, their eyes shine wisdom, less physical strength, the models of old age to my adult eyes.  The reality that even the strong ones grow weak, the memory fails, the old become like the very young.  Very much in need… not just want.

Maybe God gives us so much, and allows us the burdens, especially while we have physical strength… so that when we are old (if we are given the gift of old age)… when we are old – that is when our souls are the strongest.

He promised us He would never again flood the earth.  He gave us a symbol we see every time the sun and the rain meet.  A rainbow.

Genesis 9:8-16

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹ “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

 ¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

The pot of gold is our time with Him.  Our time with our husbands, our children, our parents, our friends (thanks Jenn, for this beautiful photo). This is the pot of gold – time.  Live it right here.  Right now.  The promise of no more flood.

 I will not drown.

It is not about trying harder.  It is about letting go.  Letting Him use me.  Less me.  More Him.  It’s easy to say that I will give Him my burdens, but I keep holding on with clenched fist.  Slowly, slowly, I am learning… clenched fist is not working out so well for me.

My young daughter brought home words from her Sunday school class… words from Him.  A message for her mama.  A message for all of us.  Take heart!

John 16:33

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.