I’m feeling tired. Overwhelmed. Not enough.
As soon as my endless to-do list appears to be becoming manageable, I walk out to the garden and find black-eyed peas to harvest and shell and can. Or beans or tomatoes or okra.
And then I find I am running low on chicken broth and I bake a chicken and make broth for 3 days and can it. And the bread is low so I have to make more.
And then laundry piles up and dishes aren’t done and the floors need cleaned and PTO meeting minutes need transcribed and items for church need to be prepared and I have to study for the MOMs class I teach on Wednesday.
And THEN my husband’s truck tire that I took in to get fixed last week is low again and I have to take it back in.
And that’s just a picture of my last three days.
This morning, my mom offered to keep Alyssa so I could catch up on housework. But I ended up taking Matt’s truck back in to the dealership and then had coffee with my best friend Tiffany and then chatted with my close friend and mentor Teresa. By the time all that was done, I picked Alyssa up and came home.
But you know what? I didn’t regret my morning in the least. I realized that being with – and venting to – two women who love me was way more restorative than catching up on my to-do list.
I shared with Teresa how I just haven’t felt right since I took my writing break three weeks ago. My life has been out of kilter. My relationship with God has felt dry. And while there may be several reasons for that, she pointed out something I hadn’t thought of:
Writing IS my rest.
God has wired me, and though I’m shy to accept this, called me, to minister through writing and teaching. While there may be seasons – like harvest season – that the need arises for me to write less than normal, shutting off that part of myself was like shutting off a part of my soul’s oxygen.
I began thinking… could many of us be running on fumes because we’ve shut off the one thing God has wired us to do? We put it aside completely because the season of life doesn’t seem to allow for it? Or we believe it’s selfish to pursue our calling when so many other responsibilities demand our attention.
Perhaps we need to understand that as believers our callings aren’t about us in the first place anyway. They’re about God, his glory, and his kingdom. They may run on 2 cylinders in some phases of our lives and run at Mach 5 in other phases, but they should still be running. They aren’t lying completely dormant waiting for the perfect time.
In the last 3 weeks, my life got out of alignment, and it’s time to recalibrate, and do what I was made to do.
Your turn: In this post, I talk about “calling.” By that, I mean how we work for the Kingdom of God based on the unique spiritual gifting He has given to each believer. Do you know your calling at this point in your life? Have you identified your spiritual gift(s)? If not, Ephesians 4:11-16 and 1 Corinthians 12 are great places to start.