Your promise preserves my life!

     God is so much stronger than all of these things that are trying to hold me down, the things that I have given power to.  Why is it so hard for me to release them to him, to give him the power over them, the power to destroy them once and for all.  I can feel myself clenching them them so tightly, white knuckled, afraid to let go.  Finances, marriage, job...it's too much, and yet I can't seem to let go.  Why?  Is it because I don't trust him with them, or that I don't trust his timing in them? 
     Sometimes I feel like I am sinking, that I am so far away from Him and beyond his reach, leaving me with all these things getting heavier and pushing me down deeper and deeper.  I got this vision of me alone, in the middle of the vast ocean, struggling.  Struggling to stay afloat.  The water around me is blue, but the water underneath me is so dark, black.  I am being weighed down by this debree, wood, sticks, garbage...junk.  I am just trying to keep my head above water, but the debree is so heavy. God sees me, he reaches for me but I am too far away, beyond his reach.  I am begging him to pull me out.  I am reminded of that saying, 'the water is rising all around me,' in reference to life just being overwhelming.  But I see it differently.  I don't control the waters, He does.  But I control all the junk I am piling on top of myself, the things that are causing me to drown, the things that are making it so hard to reach out to him.  The WATERS aren't rising, I'M sinking.  The ocean represents life, the blue of the water is life, the natural things we go through.  The black underneath is the distance that finds a way between me and Him.  It's the closer to death I get with every new piece of debree I pile on top of myself.  If I sink to far under, the glimmer of light that always gives me direction to where I should swim towards to catch my breath will dissapear.  The worst part is, is that all I have to do is remove the junk.  I control it, most of it anyways.  I know there are things that I can do to push the debree aside, to get to a place that when I reach out to him, I can see him.  But instead of trying to find my way to him, I'm am struggling to stay afloat under the weight of all the stuff, kicking and flailing about begging HIM to find me.
     There are times when God reaches down and rescues us, pulls us out of the water in one swoop.  He did that when he sent his son to die for us.  In that moment, God pulled us out of the ocean where we were all drowning.  He rescued us.  There are those times when his love for us results in a rescuing, and then there are the times when his love for us allows us to save ourselves using the tools he has given us...His word, prayer, his commandments, worship.  Of course when everything is happening in life, when you are treading rough waters for what seems like forever and the weight of all the junk is weighing you down causing you to sink, we all want a rescuing.  We cry out for God to just reach down and pull us out.  And sometimes he does, but there are the times when he doesn't, and oddly enough, it's BECAUSE he loves us.  I think it's his way of showing us that we are not helpless, that if we trust HIM and his promises, that WE WILL NOT DROWN!!

Psalm 119:50

My comfort in my suffering is this:

Your promise preserves my life.