Below are some (five) important (to me) things that I’ve learned in the past year (give or take) and would like to share them with you (how many sets of parentheses can I get in this sentence already?!):
1. Life keeps moving. Duh. But this is really actually difficult for me. Get married? Life keeps moving. Lose your job? Life keeps moving. Have a baby? Life keeps moving. Get overwhelmed at any point in all of this? Life keeps moving. Even while passing through the waters of circumstance, deep as they may be, you must continue on. And you will encounter God when you get to the other side.
2. Perfection is elusive. And an illusion. Like the anthem of Ecclesiastes says of so many earthly desires, chasing perfection is ‘meaningless, a chasing after the wind’. My version of what it means to be a perfect wife, mother, Christ-follower (wouldn’t a perfect girl write Christ-follower first?) is totally 100% make-believe. I mean, how would one woman keep an immaculate house, raise a stellar/over-achieving/prodigy child, lead throngs of other women in ministry, have hour-long daily quiet times, cook gourmet meals, and be a cheerleader for her husband (and work out!)? This would quite honestly take a team of people. Thus…I have given up. Not on life, but on perfection.
3. I can win. I can achieve a goal I set out for myself. Although, this is really less about me and more about believing God. There are lots of times that I lose hope or feel defeated maybe even before I begin, but I’ve learned (correction: am still learning) that our hope is in Christ alone, so when I’ve “lost hope”, then I’m really just forgetting that God is there with me, with promises in hand.
4. I may never be a morning person. I used to think, once I grow up, I’ll love getting up early…grown-ups love that, right? Then I thought, once I get married, and then, once I have kids. But I’m sad to say, even now that I have a baby, I still have a hard time getting out of bed before 8:30 (the same time as my sleepy-headed son…he obviously has my ”sleeping” genes). I just keep praying, God, you can use night-people too, right??
5. Busy-ness is a state of mind. So getting un-busy takes more than just clearing your schedule. And actually, I’m cheating with this one because this has only very, very recently occurred to me. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what all it does take to get the busy-mind out of my life, but I’m starting with a Sabbath and being intentional about rest, which does not equal laziness and does equal re-energizing.
So that’s all I’ve got for now.
PS, it’s now after 1am. Sigh.
1 Comment so far
Leave a comment
I love it when you write and I get to read your thoughts!! Thank you for sharing these lessons that you have learned, they are so encouraging to read. i think that we all struggle with these things and are all looking for a healthy balance… so thanks!!
Comment by abbey April 17, 2011 @ 10:57 pm