Letting it go

For some reason, this has been a very hard time for me. I've been struggling lately with discouragement.  We visited a church that my parents used to go to a long time ago today, and it "just so happened" (I believe that with God there are no accidents) that the Sunday school lesson was about discouragement.  The topic was Jeremiah, and all of the things he went through because his message from God was rejected by everyone.  He, of all people, had a reason to be discouraged, and he was at first.  But when he stopped looking at his problems through the lens of his experiences, and started looking at them through the lens of God's power, then he was cheered up.  He could really do nothing about his circumstances, but when he trusted them to the Lord, he agreed to let His will be done through him.
I've tried to surrender my problems to God, and I will keep trying.  The problem lies on my end, not His.  He doesn't refuse to keep my problems, I just seem to decide that He needs help taking care of them and take them back.  I think that's how it goes with humans, though.  It goes against every fiber of our being to let someone else have the reins of our lives.  God knows this, though.  It's how He created us.  If it was easy to give control of our lives over to Him, then we wouldn't have that discipline to make us more Christlike.  We sang the song "I Surrender All" today. In the past few years, I have taken that song really seriously.  If you say "I surrender all" but then willfully withhold your burdens, or just ignore the meaning of the words you are saying altogether, then you are lying to God.  But it occurred to me as we sang it, you don't just say "I surrender all" once and are done with it forever.  Even from day to day, we will encounter new problems and struggles.  We have to keep releasing our burdens to God.  It's the only way to renew the peace of mind that He gives us and wants us to be able to keep.
Well, I guess I just need to take my own advice, then.

Rebecca