Back in July, I wrote a Five Minute Friday post right after a week serving at camp. This post, What Broken Looks Like, was written from a very bruised and broken place. In the post, I wrote that this wasn’t a full picture, but in 5 minutes, there was just no time for details. So, right now, let me share a little more about myself and this broken moment.

In my real life, I’m an admin. I do office-y things. I’m at a desk most of the 8 hour workday. At camp this year, I decided to sign up for the admin type position, for a variety of good reasons. I figured the job would be fairly easy for me. There’s not much in an office environment that I haven’t done over the past 11 years. And, as far as skill set goes, that was true. I handled the office-y part of the position well, got back up to speed in Access within a day or two, and even learned a little bit of new info regarding SQL (sweet).

So while the actual job itself was moderately easy to pick up, it sort of took me by surprise that I was completely floundering. I was doing the work and getting sufficient acknowledgement for it, but feeling like I was drowning nonetheless. Tuesday morning, as referenced in that post, I lost it. I had 5 minutes with my husband during breakfast, where I told him I was done. Then came the moment of breaking:  the flinging of self down on the bed, the tears pouring out, the cries to God in desperation, the complete surrender.

I knew there was nowhere else to turn.

It had to be God, because in my own strength I was failing at something I’m good at.
It had to be God, or I wasn’t going to make it.

That moment of giving up was a watershed moment. I can look back and see that I moved from the side of believing in God but working really hard to get things right on my own, to handing over the reins, if you will, to surrender control of my life to God. I’ve screwed up since then, believe me, and have had to hand everything back over repeatedly, even in that one week at camp. Even in this week, trying to accomplish the 31 day blog challenge along with my normal life activities and assisting my husband with a breast cancer awareness fundraiser, it’s been about me, like a child with grubby hands, trying to hold every toy herself and dropping most of the load along the way.

Now we rest.

Now we release the things we are trying to handle in our own strength. A hurt from a relationship gone bad. A physical pain that doesn’t respond to treatment, a huge to-do list that never gets done. A problem that confounds you at every turn. A project that you can never complete.

Give it up. Stop trying so hard. Rest in God’s strength, for in His strength, we don’t have to be strong.

During my week at camp, throwing myself completely on God in brokenness, I found, not only strength to make it through the day, but rest. You and I need to do this daily, giving him our brokenness, our weakness, our failure – those grubby toys that are so important to us. In return, He will give us strength and rest.

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