The weight is beyond compare. My eyes are closed and I can sense everything and nothing all at once. The air is heavy. It is effort to breath in and out. My eyes stay closed. The eyelids provide the screen for the special feature now showing. The days, the weeks, the months play out on an endless loop. “If I would have done this, if I could have done that. Maybe if I would have tried harder, or said more, or nothing.” This is not the special feature you bring your friends to. This is a private showing, just for me, to remind me of  my so called failures. The weight still lingers. I try to lift my head, my arms, my legs. They are laden with worry, regret, anger, disappointment. I stop trying, I just lay here.

 The color drains from the photo. Joy seeps out on to the floor, while hope lies crumpled in the corner. The weight is so cumbersome, so deep. What is this? Why is this?

The darkness closes in, the light extinguished, snuffed out, only but an ember glows. Have I fallen this far from God that it weighs me so? CAN YOU HEAR ME?!

It takes all I have to cry out. To call to you. I know you are not the one who brought me here. I know you are not the one to swirl my faults around me, to weigh me down with my inabilities. I KNOW!

But it happens, it hits out of nowhere and knocks me down, pins me to the bed, or the floor, holding me in its grip like a beggar grips a coin. No letting go. Why do I end up here?

I am a sinner. I let the lies that the devil tells drag me down, distract me and keep me from the good God has for me. I fall into the trap all the time. It is like a beautiful flower, with camera in hand I walk closer, focusing on the beauty and not seeing the thorns, the hole in front of me or the bramble bushes around the flower. I get hurt, I hurt others.

Turn and run! That is what I heard on Sunday. Turn and run from the sin, from the lies, the dark. Run to Jesus, run to His word, run into the light. In Him there is no darkness.

In His name and by His blood I am saved, I am protected, I am redeemed. Satan has no power over me, I am a child of God, living in Him and thru Him. It is only when I look around and not up that I get lost. That I get weighed down, that I can’t even open my eyes. Or my heart. I need Jesus! Everyday, permeating my very being. Living in me.

It is only thru him that I have the power, the strength to throw off the weight of darkness, and sin. The weight of failure and helplessness.

In Him I am a new creation, I am made new, I am renewed. I am forgiven. I am valued, powerful. I am His child.

Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Romans 8:38-39 NIV