Take your wrestling match to god

There has been nothing more destructive to my life than all of that part of my life I spent wrestling with myself. Wrestling with things I have done, things I have failed to do, wrestling with all of the emotions tangled up in both.

Emotions that, while wrestling with ourselves, we hold onto.

I don't think there's a better pathway to the healthiest version of ourselves than to end the wrestling matches we have with ourselves. And for me, there has been no better pathway to ending the wrestling match with myself than taking that wrestling match to God.

It's hard to imagine, really, that this God so many of us come to fear is actually a God begging us to wrestle with him. Not to subdue us, but to free us.

Even if hard to imagine, though, I've discovered the truth in it.

God knows the longer we hold onto things in our lives, the longer we wrestle with the parts of us we wrestle with, the closer we come to destroying ourselves.

God knows wrestling with ourselves destroys our sleep; oh to have back the hours of sleep I have lost in my life.

God knows wrestling with ourselves destroys our immune system. Holding onto emotions eats away at the system God created in us to eat away at disease.

God knows wrestling with ourselves leads us down the road to depression and anxiety and to the epidemic of mental health crisis we find ourselves in today.

God knows we will often find ways to numb ourselves from a crisis. Trust me, there is not shortage of ways to numb.

God knows wrestling with ourselves destroys relationships. Maybe the opposite of connecting with others is wrestling with ourselves. I have more than proved it's impossible to do both, connect with anyone else while wrestling with one's self.

God knows wrestling with ourselves destroys any positive view we have of ourselves. Maybe this is of the greatest consequence, at least to the God who made us in his image. How heartbreaking it must be to the God who sees nothing but beauty in us when he hears us failing to see any of that beauty at all.

God feels our wrestling with ourselves driving a wedge between us and him. Which is why God is always crying out to us, come wrestle with me. Just bring it all to me.

God knows the biggest weight of our problems comes not from our problems being without solutions, but from carrying the burden of a belief our problems will never have solutions.

So God begs us, bring your burdens to me.

Share them with me.

King David wrestled with as many things within himself as any human in history. Oh, the things David had done and not done. So it's powerful that David eventually wrote quite prolifically about the peace that he discovered wrestling things out with God.

David said:

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
I call out to the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy mountain.

I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear though tens of thousands
assail me on every side.

I find it powerful in that Psalm that David says, I will sleep. I will wake again. Without fear.

Without fear, NOT because the assailants are gone, but because David has given up on assailing himself.

David, in wrestling with God, allows God to lift his head high, allowing David to look into the eyes of the God who sees the beauty in David that David has lost complete sight of.

I for one know what happens when we do that. When we begin to see in ourselves what God sees in us. What happens is we suddenly feel a strength we were never able to find when we were trying to wrestle it out of ourselves.

If you believe in God, but have never taken the step of wrestling with God, I encourage you to do that.

God is not afraid of our anger. God is not overwhelmed by our sadness. God is not interested in piling shame on our mistakes. God is not interested in giving us lectures in the middle of our pouring out our hearts.

God is only interested in being our shield. But before God can shield us best, he needs us to pour out to him what we most need shielded from.

And often that is our own emotions.

So give them to God. Part of God's shield is simply us being strong enough to say, this is what I feel.

Give God your emotions and quit wrestling with them yourself.

And then, sleep.

And wake.

Without fear.