Right now I feel like I'm in the middle of the chaos! A mom of 3...wife of a pastor...kids' director...musical director...crafter...homemaker...cook...
I find myself looking ahead to a new week and realizing that it's so easy for my type A planning self to already feel overwhelmed by all the things that need to be done even before the week begins. There's play practice, email, jobs, spending time with kids, volunteering, feeding my family, keeping my house clean, resting, spending time with my husband, etc. and I always seem to find a "good reason" why I should put off my responsibilities so that I can have just a little more "me time" or "rest time" and then I end up in a panic mode.
Then there are the things you don't have planned...the temper tantrums, traffic, more good things to add to the calendar :-), friends, phone calls, etc. In the midst of all the "have to dos" and "want to dos", I find that each day I tend to start and end each day with a list and measure how good or bad my week/day went, the quality of being a good mom/wife/friend, all based on my ability to complete said tasks. And this is definitely an EXHAUSTING wheel to be on. I keep thinking that it will get better or one day it will be easier when I do X or when my kids do Y. As I think of all those "one days" I stumbled across an old friend's blog today and I found a post that stopped me in my tracks. She writes about all her tasks, which are very similar to mine, and how she finds comfort in her "overwhelmed-ness". The truth is that all my inabilities to keep up or my feeling of helplessness is actually a great starting point. I can't do any of this on my own. Then I think on the message I heard at church today on Matthew 5 and realize that when Jesus told the people at the Sermon on the Mount that they needed to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and scribes AND that they needed to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect, that the weight of that is crushing. When we think that Christians are supposed to be good people that live perfect lives, we have missed the mark. The reality is that I can't do anything on my own. I can't be good on my own and if I try to measure up to the standard that Jesus told the people in Matthew 5, I will surely be crushed. So what's the answer? Jesus! He offered himself as the perfect fulfillment of that expectation so that when God looks at me He doesn't see my inability to meet the mark but Jesus' redeeming work that already did that.
In the midst of my exhaustion and anxiety, may I stop and realize that it is my feeling of being overwhelmed that points to the answer. I need to depend on someone greater than me to accomplish any tasks and to make it from one day to the next.
May my shortcomings with my kids, my failures to meet perfection not crush me but make me see my great need for God, who was perfect so that I don't have to meet that standard. May my weakness remind me that He is made perfect and bring me to a daily realization that I cannot do this life on my own but only through daily dependence on my Savior!
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