Do I believe I am blessed? Of course, I do! God’s Word tells me so numerous times, and every moment I look upon the face of one of my children, lay my head on my loving husband’s chest, gaze at the beautiful, blue sky, or feel the cool breeze blow my hair back, I know it is true. I. Am. Blessed. In this world and, thank the Lord, for all eternity, especially then. I am supremely blessed, but am I too blessed to be stressed? I think not.
The other night I was up at 2 am crunching numbers, my spouse beside me in bed, a Netflix show in the background. It just wasn’t adding up. Some more additional expenses had come up with the sale of our house, and no amount of pushing around bills seemed to tabulate in my favor. I calculated the debt again, and still, it gave me an answer I didn’t want to see. There was no way I could swing this scenario, but I had to. There wasn’t a choice.
Have you ever been between a rock and a hard place? It’s that claustrophobic space where Catch 22s live. It’s a dilemma with no perfect solution, a choice between A or B when all you want to find is the option of C. But you know what? Sometimes there’s no option C to be found. Or at least it seems that way.
When we can see no way humanly possible for a problem to work out, that’s when the stress creeps in. Y’all, I don’t care how pious, how holy, how religious you are. It doesn’t matter if you walk side by side with God; stress will still come. I mean, Moses was a man who was pretty tight with God. God spoke with him face to face as a man would a friend (Ex. 33), and still, when confronted with the enormous task of freeing his people, Moe got a little worried.
He was like, Abba, while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I get pretty nervous in front of a crowd. I get hives and stutter. It’s embarrassing. Maybe you could ask somebody else, just this time.
I can imagine him shrugging his shoulders as he tried to pass on the stressful job. But God wasn’t having it.
He basically told Moses, I created your mouth, man. And your tongue. I can certainly give you the words to say!
Point being, even those in a close and deep relationship with the Lord can feel like they’re going to buckle under the anxiety of this world. Problems come, no matter how close you are to God, but He’s always saying, “I got this” just like He did with Moses. In His Word, the Bible, the Lord tells us we’ll have trouble. Yet He also states, “Take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, NIV).
In other words, when Plan A doesn’t work and Plan B falls through, there actually happens to be a Plan C: Christ.
The annoying part is that, even if you know all these things and, like me, you proclaim boldly, “God’s got this,” you can still suffer under the stress of the situation. It doesn’t make you a horrible Christian with failing faith. It just makes you human. The important part is that, when the wind of stress blows (because it will) and the waves try to overtake you, you remember the truth. And the truth is you are blessed. You are blessed because Christ is with you.
You’ll still get stressed. There’s no stopping that. Jesus warns us it will happen. But then we must remember why we don’t remain stressed, that we don’t continue to be overcome, that the devil can knock us down, but doggone-it, we ain’t staying there!
And that’s what happened to me the other night. Financial stress came on me hard, but then, I remembered the truth. Even in my hardships, I am blessed. Even in this stressful life and its stressful problems, I am blessed. I’m not too blessed to be stressed, but I am blessed despite my stress. Even in spite of my stress.
But then do you know what happened? I was feeling good—riding along smoothly on my faith, feeling rather good about myself.
Why, yes, I have grown so much spiritually. Thank you.
When all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the bottom fell out. Man! Doesn’t it always seem to happen that way? You’re dealing with a nightmare of a problem. You’re certain it can’t get any worse! And then bam. The “worse” happens, and you’re back to square one, trying not to chew your nails to bits, eat a whole tub of ice cream, or cuss a blue streak from Kansas to Miami. I’m not saying I ate half a pie last night, but I’m not saying I didn’t. Stress! It happens. Again and again.
It’s in those moments where it really does seem like the ocean and wave after wave try to beat you down. You eat some sand, and in those moments, with the grit in your teeth, you might not feel very blessed. But when your face gets pushed in the sand, you need to remember one thing. It’s just sand.
All the problems you come across. It’s just sand. All the things you love that you fear leaving you. It’s just sand. The things you cannot change. It’s just sand. Here today, gone tomorrow. Build some castles, but don’t try to stand on them. Sand shifts, you know. It can make you sink. But in the end, whether our castles stand tall or fall flat, it’s really the rock on which we stand. The storms just happen to remind us of that. So we are blessed. Stressed, sometimes, yes, but blessed, always.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on briegowen.com
In-text Image by Ben White
Featured Image by Tamara Bellis
