I don't want to do this anymore!!!

For most of us, life eventually takes its toll on us from the day to day grind. It often begins to  feel as though someone has hit you upside the head and knocked you silly, but you are far from laughing.  As a matter of fact you rarely have fun anymore at all. Your giggle is lost, your smile is broken, and your spirit is crushed.
You may find where you no longer want to keep doing what you have needlessly have been doing for the last several months, years or even decades.

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Life seems to bring no meaning what so ever. Maybe you are nowhere to be found in an empty marriage that seems to steal a little more of your heart each and every day.
Or maybe you are hopelessly knee deep in laundry and diapers to where all you can see, smell and taste are the cleaning products, laced with dirt, sweat and tears.  
Mud here, smeared up walls there.  No please or thank you.  Just a constant attitude of “the maid will get it.” But somehow, someone forgot to enlighten you, that you were unanimously appointed this position to run for candidacy, and you were voted in to office, permanently!
Perhaps you are under water in your finances and are beginning to feel the relentless waves of reoccurring bills that come as quickly as the next roll of the tide at daybreak.  Always on time, never ceasing, and often higher than you first imagined when purchases were made.
Regardless if your endless road is lack of love, overdue bills, or the endless piles that never go away, you unfortunately are in good company.  Many are on this same journey.
The masses are exhaling huge sighs of frustration and despair to which they can’t seem to fathom another day of this dreaded disease called “life.”
Although, many have learned the trait to “keep going” and “keep quiet”, few are standing up and saying I don’t want to do this anymore.
I know there are times in all of our lives that we absolutely cannot change the tide and force it to stop in its place.  But we would make it if we could.
I can remember in my own life when I had sat in the last Dr. appointment I had ever wanted to sit in.  I had seen enough waiting rooms, I had signed my husband in way too many times, and I had seen enough hospital equipment for a life time.
Although cancer doesn’t take time off, or a vacation, or even a respite, I wanted to.  I can remember the audible sound inside my head that sounded as though I was screaming from a roof top… “I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE!”  I looked around to see if anyone could hear this voice that was booming inside of me.
I was over it.  I wanted my life back.  I wanted to wake up just one morning not worried, afraid and frustrated.  I wanted a delete button in my life for both me and my husband.
You know that tiny little key on the upper right side of your computer that holds all the power to your mistakes, your mishaps, and slip ups?
 DELETE DELETE DELETE and then it’s all gone.
Delete cancer hospitals, delete waiting rooms full of dying patients, DELETE the discouraging news of where the tumor has moved to.  Or its new size.  Delete our next 10 appointments. Delete, delete delete!!!
Delete the people who drive you crazy, who don’t have a clue but act like they do.  Delete the unknown, delete the undone life that left you hanging high and dry. 
I wanted to delete the last 16 months and start over before that day my husband went to the restroom and announced there was blood in his urine.  How such a simple statement would change our entire life forever.
Many of our lives have been turned on a dime with a diagnosis, the left of center vehicle, or the unloving person who walks out leaving your once pumping heart, barely bleeding.  Its empty.  There is nothing more to give or even take.
Wishing you could, but being hopelessly paralyzed seems to be the norm.
Often you seek to find some form of life, but you find ashes of dashed dreams and broken pieces from misplaced hopes that turned into despair.
If you live long enough, life will show you what it is really made of.  It will hand you a deck of cards that you would like to take a match to instead of even touching your fingers.
Regardless of how grim your life may look at this moment in time, can I encourage you from someone who truly gets it, and I mean “gets it”.  Not with “I think I know how you feel” But been there, done that, and bought the book kind of get it.
I know the endless pain you suffer and the darkest hour of despair that can become your constant companion instead of a passing emotion.
I know God is still there with me, but why in the world does life have to be this hard?  
Why must there be so many valleys and mountains to climb?  Most of our anthems will be “Why God why?  When God when?
Why will God sometimes allow the worst of the worst to visit our doorstep for reasons we may never know? Just like Job, Gods close friend, He allowed the unthinkable to not only visit him, but to dance with terror on both his day and nights.
Losing 10 children in one gale force wind.  Having all his herds annulated and his servants souls removed from this earth in an instant.  Anything and everything that he held dear, was gone.  Deleted from his world.  Just like that.  In an instant.
All except a disgruntled wife who only poured salt into his gapping wounds of sorrow when she told him to “curse God.”
Some of you know the plan of “an instant”.  Unfortunately, it becomes your constant.  And then becomes more than you can bear, until you finally cry out,
“I don’t want to do this anymore”
I believe Jesus also knew this feeling all too well.  We read in Matthew 26:38, that His soul was consumed with sorrow to the point of death.
Have you ever felt death would be easier than what you are dealing with today?  I know I have!Jesus too states the fact that he doesn’t want to do this anymore.  
The verse following, he asks God His Father if he would take this cup from Him?  Meaning God, I can’t take it any more.  But it was there that he also surrendered his will to the Father. Saying not my will but yours be done.
It’s in our moments of great despair that we have to resolve the matter at hand and believe that God has you where he wants you to be for His greater purposes.
What if God would have given into Jesus request?  Where would we all be today?  Without a Savior that defeated sin and death.
Jesus had to go to the cross and bear the sin of the world so that we may live an eternal life with Him.  If he would have gotten up off his knee and said,
I don’t want to do this anymore, our lives would be over.  FOREVER.
So, back to you and I.  What if God is asking us to do the same?  Not to save the world, but to be used for a greater cause than our self.  To go through something, so that we could help them in their sadness and sorrow.
What if God is leaving our current cup of distress in front of us, so that we might have compassion for those who need to know that someone else understands?
Jesus came to earth for one purpose and that was to walk among man, so that He would be able to empathize and to save us from ourselves.
Could it be that God does not remove our situations so that we will rely on Him in every moment of every hour?

​Hebrews 13:5 promises that God will NEVER leave us nor forsake us.  Isn’t that great news in the midst of our pain and suffering that Jesus knows what its like to go through what you are going through and not only that, but he will walk through it with us.  
Never leaving us for even a second.
So no matter where you find yourself today, know this…God goes with you, He is for you and if anyone would be against you,  He’s got them covered too. He will fight for you. 
You need to only stand still.
 The next time you feel as though you cannot take it any longer, remember our Saviors words…not my will, but yours be done.

Blessings- Shannon