The thing about choices is that every time you choose one thing, you also reject some other thing, or things.  It can seem easy when the choice is between strawberry shortcake and saltines (obviously, strawberry shortcake would win every time).  It can even seem fairly simple when the choice is between two really amazing desserts…perhaps apple pie, instead of saltines, compared with the shortcake…because even though you have to reject one of them now, you know that sometime down the road, you can choose the apple pie.  It’s not a forever choice.  I think I’ve often gone through life with that mentality.  I can forgo a good thing in the moment if I know that I’m not denouncing it forever.

But the truth of the matter is this: when we choose God, the absolute, unequivocal best, there are seemingly good things that we will at some point have to reject.  Things that maybe, in and of themselves, are not bad or sinful, but in God’s plan are not best for us.  It could be material wealth, social status, friendships, family…heart’s desires that might seem borne out of noble affections but that, somehow, would conflict with the One who has to always be first.  It’s the call to be a living sacrifice for the Lord.  And, honestly?  I just don’t get it, sometimes.

I understand the need to have to put Him first.  It’s the daily walking it out that can be confounding.  Because so much of choosing Him means choosing a truth that – though cemented in the deepest parts of me – is, even so, often intangible – a hope, a believing when I can’t see, a wrestling not against flesh and blood.  And in that choosing, rejecting my heart – emotions that can overwhelm and convince and distort and make themselves seem to proclaim the necessities of life; and rejecting circumstantial reality – concrete, life facts that can seem unchangeable.

In these moments, I find myself wondering why.  Why this heart, made to feel, but which only matters when it agrees with Him anyway?  Why these felt needs, that can really be painful, or difficult, or confusing?  I’m not sure I understand the point of Him making us this way.  It isn’t that I don’t know the answers that are given, they just don’t always make sense to me.  I get tired of laying the same things down over and over again.  My heart feels bruised and weary and weak.  I know I will always choose Him…I’m not trying to find a reason to choose something else…but couldn’t He just make it easier?  Couldn’t there be some limit to the sacrifice?  It’s selfish, I’m sure, but I’d just like a break from the hurting for a while.