The Weight of the Cross

The crosses in my life are tailor made for me by God.  He has given them to me because He knows that there is something that I need to learn through them, because of them, in spite of them.  I can fight them, I can complain about them, I can try to escape from them, but until God wants them out of my life, they will remain.

I can compare my crosses to others.  Compared to some they loom large, but lately, from what I've seen coming across my screen, they seem so tiny, so insignificant.  Yet I struggle to carry some of them.  

Some are easy; just an annoying blip on the radar screen of my life.  Some of them, though, are so heavy.  I know I need to embrace them because once I do there will be peace and joy.  Yet I cannot seem to do that all the time.  

There are good days and there are bad days.  On the good days I see these crosses as a challenge; I can face them head on.  On a bad day they weigh me down and threaten to bury me.  When that happens I have found that a few things help to get me through those times:

* Of course prayer.  Without God, nothing is possible.  I cannot carry the weight of the cross on my own.  I depend entirely on His grace.  Sometimes it seems slow in coming, so I wait as patiently as I can.

* Exercise.  Yes, I have found that some good ole vigorous exercise is good for the spirit.  It gets those endorphins flowing and I just feel better.  The hardest part is starting.

* Being thankful.  On bad days I try very hard to think of all of the things I am thankful for and all of the things that God has blessed me with.  I can also be thankful for the crosses that God has NOT sent me.  

There are days when I try all of these and I STILL feel the weight.  That is when I retreat into the quiet of my soul and just wait.  I know that it will pass eventually.  I go through my day saying as little as possible so as to do the least amount of damage possible.  At the end of the day, I beg God for more Grace and hope that tomorrow will be better.

God Bless!