The Road to Unity

I've always been very proud of the amount of "work" I accomplish in a day's time. When I was in college a friend would joke with me saying "Kelsey gets more accomplished by 3:00pm than most people do in a week!". And the funny thing is that they weren't wrong. I'd be up at 3:00am to be at work by 3:45am, off by 12:00pm, in class by 12:30pm and writing a paper by 2:00pm. I've never been one to wait until the last second or break to smell the roses. I've always enjoyed a completed project. I like being self sufficient and sustained. In the context of my current season, it wouldn't be too far off to say that I spend my days off grocery shopping, cleaning, rearranging furniture, building train tracks, catching up on the family calendar, paying bills, making meals, attending playdates, reading to my kids, and maintaining friendships. Whew! Crushing it! Right? Maybe not so much.

Saturday I decided I would convert my 3 year old son's crib into a "big boy bed". I decided to take on the task taking apart the crib by myself and attempted to assemble all the boards, nuts, and bolts into a full size bed. I thought to myself "I hope my husband is surprised when he sees how much I did today while he was at work!". I wrestled that bed for a good hour. I arranged the boards in every angle possible. I used various objects to help support each board from each side. My children stood in the doorway watching this spectacle of their mother sweating, breathing heavily, and not making any progress. Once my body gave out from tensing up due to frustration of getting no where (not even one bolt in tack) I sat in the middle of the mess and sobbed. It was an ugly cry. It was the kind of cry where I was holding back all of the special nicknames I had made for each piece of the non functioning bed because my children were present. Suddenly my 5 year old daughter walked over to me and put her hand on my back and said "Mommy, are you sad because you didn't ask for help?"

...And just like that the floodgates of even bigger and more ugly crocodile tears began to pour out of my tear ducts. YES! YES! YES! That is exactly why I felt sad. I have built my world around this lie that "I can do it myself". This lie that said I can be self sustained. This lie that fueled my pride and had kept me from asking for help for so long. You see, my heart had been wrestling God for about 2 weeks building up to my epic wrestling match with the bed. God had been prompting me to ask for help and my pride held me back. I chose to ignore God's voice to save face. I chose to "do it all on my own". I chose the hard path. The less fulfilling path. Now here I was sitting in the middle of my son's room surrounded by useless boards and hardware doing an ugly cry in front of my children. My stubbornness and pride has ruptured into the massive wave of emotion.

I sat there for a good 20 minutes. I chose to talk to God. He revealed the truth to me, as He will always do when His children come to Him. He reminded me who I am. I am strong but I am not strong enough, and that's ok. I was never meant to "do it all on my own". No one is. God's design is for His people to live in unity; to bear one another's burdens. I am created to bless and to be blessed. My idol of independence and pride has kept me from allowing others to come alongside me; essentially to bless me.

So... I waited until my husband came home to build the bed. We did it together. It was easy! It took about 10 minutes. WE DID IT TOGETHER. I was left with nothing to brag about and a functioning "big boy bed" for my son.

The next day I went back to the thing I had been wrestling with God about and I chose to trust and obey what He was telling me to do. Not easy. Messy. Yet, I know i'm more unified with the Father today because of this encounter. It's not always about what we accomplish but rather how we engage with the process. I'm slowly approaching this reality that i'm not meant to do the hard things in life alone. The Lord goes before me. He prepares a way and it may not always be the path I had set out to take. Nonetheless, it's His will I'm chasing. Messy, here I come.

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" -Galatians 6:2