holding it all together..or not!

Reading one of my favorite books of all time, "The Christians Secret To A Happy Life" by Hannah Whitall Smith. 

I thought I would share a quote that touches me every time I read it...

The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self. The most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daikon living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, and our peculiar temperaments, our inward affairs of every kind, these are the things that perplex and worry us more Than anything else,and that bring us oftenest into bondage and darkness. In laying off your burdens, therefore, the first one you must get rid of is yourself. You must hand yourself and all your inward experiences, your temptations, your temperament, your frames and feelings, all over into the care and keeping of your God, and leave them there.  He made you, and therefore He understands you and knows how to manage you, and you must trust Him to do it. say to zhim, "Here, Lord, I abandon myself to thee. I have tried in every way I could think of to manage myself, and to make myself what I knowI ought to be, but have always failed. Now I give it up to thee. Do thou take entire possession of me. Work in me all the good pleasure of thy will. Mould and fashion me into sucha vessel as seemeth good to thee. I leave myself in thy hands, and I believe thou wilt, according to thy promise, make me into a vessel unto thy honor, 'sanctified', and meet for the Master's good work" and here you must rest,trusting yourself thus to Him continually and absolutely. 

I love the freedom this passage suggests. I see the parts and pieces of my life flying in the wind and I try to pull them back together with bungee cords of my own making. Pretending that I am the person that I am suppose to be, hoping nobody sees the dangling sins and inconsistencies. It's too hard, I can't manage myself. I can't hold it all together!  But as Hannah Smith suggests...I don't need to!