Today’s Post Written By: Lisa Hutson
Running, I felt the pain of dead weight pulling on my back and upper abdomen. With each step, the weight got heavier and heavier and the pain more intense. The thought of my dead weight being removed brought excitement and hope, but it also seemed too good to be true. After all, there was a part of me that had not been able to let go of it, a part of me that felt as though I deserved the suffering that came with the dead weight.
You see, I did this to myself. I decided years ago that taking care of me was not a priority. The pain and disappointment of life was too much for me to bear on my own, I turned to food to numb my pain, to comfort me, to fill those empty places of my soul. As the scale climbed year after year, my soul became emptier and emptier.
I eventually came to a place where I realized that I could not do life on my own, nor was I ever created to. I cried out to God and He came to fill those empty places. I had to cry out to God almost constantly to resist the temptation of food. If I continued to try and fill my emptiness with food, there would be no room for God. Food would always leave me yearning for my next fix. When God filled my emptiness, He filled me to all fullness. As I learned to crave God, not food, I went on an amazing spiritual journey that led to great physical benefits.
With 100 pounds lost, God gave me freedom in an area I never dreamed possible. But with the weight loss came about 15 pounds of skin on my stomach that was nothing but dead weight. There was nothing that I could do about it. No amount of exercise or healthy eating could take away the dead weight of that skin. As the doctor recommended a skin removal surgery, I had a hard time finding peace with it. I asked for prayer from some of my closest friends. The dead weight was causing me a significant amount of pain, but for some reason I could not let go of it.
Then one day, a dear friend of mine looked me in the eye and said, “You need to let go.”
I gave her a confused look and went on to ask her what she was talking about. She said, “The skin… you need to let it go.”
At first, I thought she was telling me that I was making a big deal out of nothing. But then she went on to explain how I needed to stop punishing myself, let go, and have the dead weight removed. She reminded me that God did not want me to keep suffering and punishing myself. He wanted me to accept His grace and mercy and rest in the safety of His arms. It was then that I realized I was carrying the weight of needless shame.
You see, I had accepted the pain that I was having because I had done this to myself. I had gained all those unneeded pounds and even though God has given me freedom, I was still carrying the shame and guilt from my bad choices. My body was physically carrying the dead weight of all that skin, and it was time to let it go and have it removed. There is nothing that I can do to remove this skin and the pain that is associated with it.
Isn’t this how we approach God with the emotional and spiritual dead weight in our lives? So many times we hold on to it because we believe somehow we deserve the pain we are experiencing. But God says to us, “Let it go.” He sent his only son to die for the mistakes He knew we would make. The price has already been paid. We don’t need to keep punishing ourselves and carrying around the dead weight. The surgery required to remove the weight of my extra skin required only my submission to the hands of the surgeon. There was nothing that I can do.
The removal of our spiritual dead weight requires a similar submission, not to a surgeon, but to The Great Physician, Jesus Christ. Just like I could do nothing about the dead weight of my extra skin, there is no amount of effort we can put forth to remove our spiritual dead weight. Just as the dead weight of extra skin causes me great pain, so does the spiritual dead weight in our lives.
What spiritual dead weight is weighing you down today? I challenge you to let go, stop punishing yourself, and let God free you from your pain by surrendering the dead weight in your life to Him and accepting His grace and mercy in its place.
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)