And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10 ESV

It never crossed my mind that God keeps us in our struggles until He wants us out of them, but there it is in scripture saying that’s exactly what He does. If He’s leaving me there, He has a reason. Instead of struggling against it, I want to lean into the lesson. 

What I don’t want to do, though, is compound my struggles. Each of us fights against something we can’t quite seem to overcome whether it’s addiction, illness, finances, or some unnamed thing.  

Mine is relationships. 

I can’t tell you how exhausted I feel when I juggle all the things that go along with struggling over people. I kept up with who hurt whose feelings and why, if we were on friendly terms or not, and when it’d be okay to relax around them again. 

Most of the time, my opponent had any idea we were at odds. It’d be a struggle with myself – one-sided and all about not being able to stop my struggle.

I’ll likely always fight the urge to struggle inside relationships because they’re so important to me, which means I spend a lot of time in and around them. Also, they’re messy. 

However, I don’t have to make up a struggle. I’ve stepped back from it and let my people go. 

What do you struggle with? Are you ready to stop? 

In This Together,
Kim