I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

When I’m broken, it’s like God give me a wake-up call. No matter how much I try to tell myself "I can handle it" or "It doesn’t matter", God always seems to know exactly when I’ve had enough. He knows that I need him to show me again that I simply can’t do it on my own.

I am human - like it or not. And I keep learning that one of the strongest experiences of being human is the experience of pain. For me, no pain is greater than the feeling of loneliness. I try to escape that pain by looking to others - trying to please everyone, hoping to find comfort in acceptance. But when I do this, I forget what I’m giving up. I give up my identity. I give up my free will. I give up the greatest gift ever given to humankind: a relationship with Christ.

When a person accepts Jesus Christ as their savior, they are crucified with Him. This means that they give up any claim to their own life, give it to Jesus, and identify themselves with Him. But to live this out, we don’t just try to imitate Christ, we let God work in our hearts, making us Christ-like from the inside-out.

Sometimes it seems like problems just keep piling higher and higher onto my back until I just can’t carry them anymore. When that happens, my knees give way, and I find myself kneeling in prayer. I return to God in hopes of finding peace. It sometimes takes being broken like this for us to reach the point where we will listen and open ourselves up to what God wants to say. Pain reminds us that we can’t do it all - it reminds us of our sin. If we remember that we are identified with Him, and hand over all of ourselves into his capable hands, we will live out His will and experience his joy. And even though pain’s not going to just disappear, when we rely on God, he will bring us hope and give us the ability to learn and grow from our experiences, to see the end result as He sees it."

How we live our lives on the outside is the direct result of what lives in us on the inside. A life lived in God’s will is a life of peace. When our soul rests in the hands of a creator who died for us to show us how much he loves us, we can rest assured that we are well taken care of... and so we don’t have to try to carry the load alone. His shoulders are strong enough to carry every burden.

(Chantelle (Shonty) Boudreau is 20 and attends Western University in London.)