A Lesson From My Boys

Last updated on: August 22, 2014 at 4:03 pm by Rebecca Frech

A Lesson From My Boys 2014-08-22T16:03:28-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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I cleaned my boys’ room yesterday. Three garbage bags of trash, a big box of winter clothes, a giant box of costumes and two bins of legos hauled out just to find the floor. I expected tears and complaints at the loss of their toys and favorite playthings. I got, instead, relief. They were so happy to find a room which was suddenly manageable for them. The mess which had made me crazy and their father a lunatic, was truly beyond their capability to clean.

I had considered myself a benevolent dictator who allowed them to keep all they possessed as long as they kept it the way I wanted it kept. They were drowning under the weight of the responsibility and didn’t know how to ask for help. My trash-purging tirade was not the punishment I had feared it would be, but was an act of mercy and a release.

How many times have I found myself in that same position in my own life? Weighted down by responsibilities and exhausted by the weight of the burdens I shoulder. They wear on me and wear me out. They are the source of my mental fatigue at the end of every day. These useless pointless, and truly unwanted, burdens. I keep asking for God to give me the strength to carry them all, the ability to do everything, be everywhere, and live up to an unrealistic vision of success. I am like my own children; they have learned it from me, this never-give-in attitude. This unwillingness to admit defeat even when it becomes so apparent to everyone else.

I am asking for the wrong things. I do not need more strength and greater ability. I need fewer burdens and greater humility. I need to learn to admit that I can not and do not want to do it all. I need to ask my Heavenly Father to come in with His trash bags and clear out the garbage and the unnecessary which are weighing down my life. I need to follow the example of my own sweet sons and learn to revel in the freedom which is mine if only I can learn to let God take out the trash.

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