Knowing yourself includes knowing how you feel physically and emotionally. As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, we get better at detecting how we are feeling in general. Many of us have long bouts of weariness. In fact, much of society seems to be weary. We sometimes say we are just tired, but do you notice that some folks seem to be always tired. Perhaps what we face is not a physical weariness, but an emotional weariness.
Rest can take the form of sleep or relaxation, but many of the emotional burdens that we carry stem from our pursuits of happiness in all of the wrong places. When our ultimate goal is a better career we gain stress and anxiety. When our ultimate goal is raising the best kids we can feel guilty for our parenting past mistakes. When our ultimate goal is to better our neighbors, we can develop resentment and insecurity. In the end, these pursuits can yield feelings such as stress, anxiety, guilt, resentment, and insecurity ... which all amount to a ton of emotional burden.
Our shelves are full of books telling us to run away from these problems. Take a vacation ... meditate ... don't think about it ... don't deal with it. We are ready to take Chicken Soup for the Soul and stare at the ocean, but are we ready to seek out a better path altogether? I don't know about you, but I am not interested in running away from my burdens for a week, only to come back and get those same burdens reapplied. I'm not interested in meditating on flowers and clouds for an hour, just to awake from my slumber and re-enter my cold reality of a life. What I want is a whole new path. I want to walk through my life without the emotional burdens that cause so much weariness. I want to understand how I can get there and who can help me.
If you find yourself weary from the burdens of chasing power, money, comforts, successes, and acceptance from others; know that those burdens can be gone by changing your path. If you are a regular churchgoer but have these burdens weighing you down, it is time to walk backwards to the split in the road, and then take the other path towards a true Christianity. We are designed to be something altogether different than humans burdened by emotional strain. Understanding how you are designed, what you were designed to become, and how you can get there is exactly what we cover in the Accept Yourself content.
“ I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”