Feeding the Ducks

Do you ever have those days (or weeks or months) where you feel kinda stuck? You don’t know where God is or what the heck He is doing? But instead of bringing to the Lord, you just get busy? Then you let it all pile up and it gets harder and harder until you feel like giving up? It’s almost like we avoid dealing with our junk because we are afraid of what God will say or do. We think it’s easier to ignore our mess instead of dealing with it.  So, what do we do? We numb out.

My aunt told me a story this past weekend. When she was my age, she had to move back home temporarily between jobs. My grandpa told her she couldn’t sit around all day and that she needed to go apply for jobs. Naturally she was discouraged. 24 years old, living at home, not knowing what she wanted to do and too beat down to put herself out there. She just felt defeated. This is a spot I think many of us twenty-somethings find ourselves in. So, every day she would get dressed, take her briefcase and tell her dad she was going on “various interviews.” But, the only thing in her briefcase was a loaf of bread and she would go to the park all day and feed the ducks. Then, she would come home pretending she was job-hunting all day.

Now, part of me chuckled as I imagined this happening, but honestly this is just about how I feel at this particular point in my life: lost on what I want to do, defeated because I can’t figure it out and not wanting to face it at all.

Eventually my grandpa got suspicious, and one day he wrestled her briefcase away from her while she was on her way out the door. Opening it, he was so confused and she looked at him, tears in her eyes and told him what she had been doing. And all he said was, “Let me get my coat,” and they went and fed the ducks together.

I can’t help but think our Heavenly Father wants to do the same for us.

He simply wants us to let Him in on how we are really feeling and join us while we go do things like feeding ducks.

He’s not disappointed, He’s not ashamed, and He doesn’t make us solve the world’s problems. God already knows where we are at, and He knows where we are going.

But what do we do instead? We get dressed up on the outside like everything is fine and we are doing what we are supposed to. We go through the motions. We try to handle it ourselves and don’t ask for His help. We think if we ignore it, it will go away. But inside we are just kidding ourselves. We get overwhelmed and hide, pretending we are secure when in reality we feel like our worlds are falling apart.

It’s not supposed to be so burdensome. Yes, being a Christian is hard, but I can’t find somewhere in the Bible that says we will always be free of days like these.

But He wants to be the one to carry our burdens. He just wants us to walk with Him while He does.

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:30

Good news is that we don’t have to do it alone, and He already has the plan in motion.

I don’t know where your current situation has you, but maybe today, we can just invite Him to help us feed the ducks.

Always, Meghan XO