When Life Gets Too Hard to Stand, Kneel.

Every spring and early summer, I get hit with terrible hayfever (that's what us Brits call a pollen allergy).

When I say terrible, I mean absolutely awful. When it's bad, I'll sneeze around 500 times in a day.

And I try to push through it.

Keep working, keep going, sneezing constantly, but determined to function anyway.

After about the 200th sneeze, I tend to give up and get into bed. For my own good, and for everyone around me.

I don't just have this stubbornness with hayfever. I do the same thing with most of my life.

I keep trying to stand through everything. Pushing through, bearing up, managing it all. Determined to stay strong, to handle it, to keep going no matter what. And I don't stop until I absolutely can't stand anymore.

But what if I stopped sooner? What if I recognized earlier that I need to kneel?

When I'm standing, I'm carrying the weight on my own shoulders. When I kneel in prayer, the burden shifts from my strength to God's.

From my limited capacity to His unlimited power. From what I can handle to what He can handle.

Kneeling is both worship and desperation. It's acknowledging He's God and I'm not. It's recognizing He's my Maker and I need Him.

It's bringing my burdens to the One who can actually bear them while also bowing in reverence to the One who deserves it.

Prayer shouldn't be my last resort when everything else fails. It should be my first response. But I get it backwards. I try to manage, problem-solve, push through. And only when I'm completely depleted do I finally kneel.

What if I knelt sooner? What if I stopped trying to prove I'm strong enough and instead humbled myself, letting God carry what's crushing me?

Today, if you're pushing through when you should be kneeling, stop. Bring it to prayer. Let the burden shift. You were never meant to carry it all alone.