Doing the right thing and being good have always mattered to me. In some ways I can be very black and white, simply put I am a rule follower, and with that has come a crushing sense of failure on a fairly regular basis.
“Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.” Matthew 5:17
To say that lately I have found myself flattened beneath the crushing yoke of the world, a yoke of expectations that I have essentially fashioned for myself, is probably an understatement.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:28-30 that his yoke is easy to bear and his burden is light, so why am I and so many others feeling crushed?
so why am I and so many others feeling crushed?
I feel like this week I had an answer to this question, or at least a portal to better understanding. After anxiety rearing its ugly head and making my Wednesday night and Thursday uncomfortable to say the least, I found myself spinning out on Friday. I was mentally, emotionally, and even physically exhausted, and likely pretty unpleasant to be around. I was crushed and I was unintentionally muddying the environment around me, step in God.
Quiet a while ago I purchased a copy of Emily P Freemans book ‘Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life’ it has sat on my Kindle to be read pile for a very long time, and just recently I started reading it. In true God fashion it was and is exactly what I needed to be reading at exactly the right time. It’s a book that deals with living behind masks, in particular the mask of a good girl. While I’ve read and assessed my own style of good girl, I was able to recognise a few behaviours and even a potential source for why that behaviour was one I used, and then I read this, “The law was designed to expose our heart condition, to make us see our guilt.” She goes on to talk about how God’s expectation was never for us to achieve all of those things in our own strength, but for our inability to achieve them to show us how little we can do without him, and to simply trust God to not only bridge the gap, but to take care of the law in its entirety. Step in the Jesus shared with us in Matthew 5:17.
“The law was designed to expose our heart condition, to make us see our guilt.”
Emily P Freeman ‘Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life’
The thing with Jesus is that its not just about the 10 Commandments or the other laws, rules, and regulations sprinkled through the Bible, He isn’t just fulfilling those, He is all in. For every potential expectation you have placed on yourself, or allowed others to place on you, whether its about your home, parenting, career, relationship, spirituality, or any other thing under the sun, He is standing right there with you saying ‘I got this’. Which doesn’t mean He’s going to vacuum your lounge, but it means He doesn’t even notice the mess you are worrying about in the first place. The job isn’t gone. The expectation, pressure, guilt, and disapproval associated with doing, or not doing, the job is gone.
I am still discovering what allowing God to take these things looks like. I’m still figuring out who I truly am behind the mask. I am still scared of the hurt and rejection that often comes with putting the thoughts, opinions, love, and grace of God, before how others might see me and what I am doing. I am scared that I might simply be a terrible person. But I am trying to trust God to take care of the law, I’m trying to remember that God tells me I am ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’(Psalm 139:14), so I can live in the freedom He promises me (Galatians 5:1).