Yesterday and today, I woke with a feeling of heaviness that seemed to show up out of nowhere. As I have carried the feeling around with me and tried to understand it, the only word that has resounded again and again is the word sad.

For some reason I didn’t fully understand, I felt sad.

This morning, as I came before Jesus in prayer with these feelings, I hardly knew what to say and barely had the energy to stay with him in prayer. I just kept coming back to that same word: sad.

So I told him I was feeling sad.

And even though our prayer times lately have included a lot of walking and talking together, this morning I just wanted to stop and have him look at these feelings of sadness I felt. I didn’t understand them, but perhaps he would help me see what was there and why it was there.

I stood before him and looked into his eyes and just told him, “I’m feeling sad.” I told him I didn’tunderstand where it was coming from, but there it was nonetheless. And slowly, slowly, I heard him speaking to me.

My grace is sufficient for you. My yoke is easy.

Jesus helped me see that my sadness stemmed from getting twisted up inside the first level of formation these last few days. Without realizing it, my ego has gotten mired in the things I have been given to do. When the stakes seem high or the way unclear, when the plans have gone awry and I have needed to keep moving forward, I have feared failure. I have feared my intentions won’t matter and my efforts won’t be enough.

And then the world seems like a huge and scary place.

But Jesus looked at me this morning and said, “My grace is sufficient for you. Cast your cares upon me and let me care for you. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is my work through you. I will see it through to completion in the way I intend it to be done.”

There is something immensely relieving about not having to hold all the pieces of our worlds together. It really does create a lightness of being that’s a bit inexplicable, a sense of participating in something larger than us for which we are given an easy role to play. As it turns out, our worth and performance is not on the line as we’d imagined they were.

This is what comes from trusting our ego into God’s hands instead of holding on to it ourselves.

Can you relate to this struggle with the ego? Does it ever feel like a huge and unbearable burden to bear and maintain? What is it like for you to consider trusting God with your ego instead?