Care {31 Days of Five-Minute Free Writes}

Are we weak and heavy-laden
Cumbered with a load of care
Precious Savior, still our refuge
Take it to the Lord in prayer 

—Joseph M. Scriven

Those lyrics and their melody played in my mind upon seeing that the writing prompt for this post was care. It annoyed me. Those lyrics are frustrating because they're far more easily said than done. They make it sound so simple to rid oneself of that “load of care.” Just pray about it. Bam! Cares gone.

The lyrics are Biblical. We’re instructed: “Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you” [1 Peter 5:7].

But it’s so hard. Casting cares is not as easy as casting a fishing line.

And yet… casting a fishing line was quite difficult for me before I practiced it many, many times. It was exasperating because most of the time the line didn’t even cast; it just floundered in the air near my head and then landed in a tangle.

I must still be in the process of learning to cast my cares. So many times when I attempt to give them to the Lord in prayer and be done with them, I find they’ve only tangled around me yet again.

Like the art of casting a fishing line, perhaps casting cares only comes through practice.

I won’t give up.

This post is part of 31 Days of Five-Minute Free Writes, an exercise in writing a timed, prompted post every day during the month of October. For me, it's a challenge to move beyond prideful perfectionism, to write more freely, and to share more openly.