Striving Vs. Abiding

 As a mom  of a now 2 year old and 7 month old, life has been quite frankly utterly insane. Navigating motherhood is like a constant cycle of evolution with lots of prayer you are evolving in the direction God would have you go. A lot of things have been on my heart lately and as I have begun to work on myself and strive to break generation curses that have affected me, a specific theme has weighed heavy. This theme is "striving vs. abiding". I think this leads into  a lot of things from questions, to statements and really looking inward. Personally God has been speaking this to me in a few realms, contentment being a big one and also reliance. Our culture pushes us to constantly strive to be better and I have noticed this targets moms quite heavily. Now striving toward goals and to better oneself is not inherently bad, however like anything when you devote to much to it or perhaps even begin to worship the idea, goal etc it becomes toxic and perhaps even an idol. I will be vulnerable for a moment, this postpartum has been hard, I don't know if I have truly ever felt as disconnected from God, myself or those around me as I have this past season. One of the ways I decided to attempt to cope with this was to chase everything, strive to be better because if I could just be better or do enough then I would feel better and be enough right? If I prayed the right words, did the right devotional, read the right parenting book, vowed to never raise my voice at my child again, joined the right groups etc.. the list goes on and on but it ends in the same place, THEN I would be good enough. Obviously its easy to see how this is a toxic and unhealthy point of view, however when your in it, the rains of life have vision so blurred its hard to see anything. The enemy uses this, he gets the lie of striving embedded so far into our minds and hearts we are exhausted, then at our point of exhaustion when we realize we can't keep up, he speaks more lies, "failure", "unloved" ,"not valuable" etc. These lies eat at us until were frankly left crumpled in a ball crying out to God. I got here, I tried the devotionals and pressuring myself to just do enough and be enough and then things came full circle as they tend to do because we thankfully serve a faithful God who loves us enough to bring us home. As I have encountered my brink of exhaustion and burn out, the term abiding has been on my heart. How often do we spend so much time and energy chasing God that it doesn't even occur to us to abide in him, spend time with him, just be with him? Devotionals are helpful, yes reading our bible is essential to spiritual growth, but nothing replaces sitting at the feet of our Heavenly Father, just being in his presence. He is here and he loves us before we have everything right, before we have the newest devotional or the most perfect words to pray. He is here and when we break down the walls of our own expectations for ourselves and if we are honest even the expectations we perhaps unconsciously set for God, then we have the freedom to abide. In this state of abiding we are able to refill our cups spiritually to pour into our children and others, we are able to find peace fear peaks its head and we are able to find contentment in what we have and where we are in life right now. Letting go of the pressure of striving to be and embracing the freedom of just being with our creator each moment and letting him flow and work through us is a beautiful gift. I am focusing less this week on what I can do and more on what he can do, how will you embrace and practice the gift of abiding going forward?