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So, the other day – in between being mad – I had to laugh at myself. 🙂

You may have read here through the past several months, how God has already taken me to a place that is crazier than most people I know would like to be. That every week, every day, we are not really sure where the money to pay our bills is going to come from. We wake up, we do the day – seeing what God has in store.

Well, over the past week and a half or so, I have consistently been more and more tense about our financial situation. When I take a step back – I see that really, nothing has changed. But, for some reason, I am noticing the tightness again. There are credit problems I need to fix (not our fault) and an error with a credit card company (WAS our fault – sorta…) and well, that whole lack of income thing… it’s just been building up, and so do you know what I do???

WRONG!!! I SHOULD remember that we have been here before and God always comes through so I should TRUST HIM… BUT I DON’T.

There is this cycle, that today became more amazing to me than ever before. You see, life has been grand in the past 4 weeks or so. God has shown me cool stuff about me that I needed to know – and cool stuff about Him that I needed to know — and given me a direction to go from there. And I did. And life has been grand.

But you know what often happens when life is grand – when things go our way? We LIKE it. We really like it. So much that we hold on with all of our MIGHT to it.

THAT is what I have been doing. In my desire to be a “good steward” of what God has given me (my family, my time, my resources) I have begun to “manage” too much. Taking too much “responsiblity” where in fact I am not actual responsible.

Now I can hear my dads out there (my dad and my dad-in-law) saying, “Nowwwww, wait just a minute there, boy! God wants us to be responsible! He has given us a brain and a body to work hard and to earn a living for our families. What kind of man would not work hard to provide for his family???” And there I think we have a generational terminology gap. See, I think that my generation is more OK with saying we need to give God more room – take on less responisibility, cause it means something different to us.

I am so honored that God would trust me with the lives of Jen and our three kiddos. But I know that in the end, I have no control over the money that comes in or the provisions He provides… see… God has put me in this position to lead, but I am only as good at leading as I am at following Him. And in days recent past, I have not been good at that.

And I feel if physically, spiritually, emotionally… I am trying too hard. I am feeling too much burden. I am straining to do it all myself, and keep my temporarily happy little world that God has blessed me with the past couple weeks.

“Come to me you who are weary, and I will give you rest. Lay your burdens down” – paraphrase from Matthew 11:28.

God wants us to let Him lead. Do not be lazy – don’t shirk honest hard work. But don’t bear the burden. God is our provider. Don’t worry about tomorrow, cause today has enough trouble of its own! (another cool quote from Jesus)

I have tried hard today to give up my fight to keep control in my life. It has worked a bit. I have been far less stressed. I have a good test coming up this weekend. There are SO many things I need to do RIGHT NOW it seems… but my wife is so excited about the Home School convention… we are going all day tomorrow and Saturday (with a concert in the middle back here at home tomorrow night!!) and our niece is graduating Saturday with a party on Sunday following a big morning at our church (Crosswinds) in the morning…

So I have a lot of chances to trust God with my time (I won’t have any) and my finances (we won’t make any) and my family (I sure do love them) 🙂

All that to say… what are you holding on to?