Pause: Why are you doing what you're doing?

This week I've been utterly overwhelmed with all of the different roles I am playing this semester.  I have my role as a student, as an RA, as an employee (in two separate positions), as prospective law student, as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister, as a girlfriend, and as a human being just trying to stay healthy.  To top it off, I discovered a crack in my windshield this morning that probably will need to be fixed before driving home for Spring Break at the end of this week.  I was gifted an awesome planner for Christmas that I've been using to schedule myself and prioritize projects.  At the beginning of the week I sat down to try and organize myself in this planner, scheduling out my days half hour by half hour, and I discovered that 24 hours in a day just simply is not enough.

I'm sure that most people can relate to the chaos of trying to fill more roles in life than you can count, regardless of your stage of life.  When something needs to go, though, what is the first thing?  I'll tell you that this week, for me, it was spending time with God.  Thank goodness that He's shouting loud enough for me to pause and pay attention to Him today, only halfway through the week, before my head explodes.

As I sit in our local coffee shop I am reminded that of all my roles only one really matters: my role as a follower of Christ.  If I'm seeking Him, everything else will work out.  I took a moment this morning to pause and listen to Him, looking through the red text in the New Testament, and was drawn to a fairly popular passage in Mark.  Jesus has just been asked which of the commandments is the most important and this is His answer: "Love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:30-31).

This reminds me that nothing is as important as loving God and loving His people.  I shouldn't be fulfilling these roles that I am overwhelmed by this week simply because they're items on my to-do list, but because God has called me to each of them in this moment of life.  Every item that I check off should be to God's glory, even the most tedious task stops feeling stressful when its done to fulfill God's command to love Him and His people.  The papers I write this week are for God's glory so that I can learn about this world that He's created, the copy and paste data entry that I do this week is for God's glory so that I can share the load with coworkers and earn money to use to further His kingdom.  The conversations I have are to connect and love the people God has guided me to know.

Today Christ re-centered me on Him, and I challenge you to let Him do the same for you.  I guarantee that even the longest of to-do lists will seem less stressful when you are reminded of your call to life.  Your purpose here is to love God and love His people - do everything with that in your heart, and trust that God will help you find the time to do what needs to be done.

I Love You More

My senior year in high school will be starting in just a few days, and it seems like all of a sudden, there is very little in life, other than trying to plan for college and summer reading. 

The pre-college process is stressful.  I am currently looking at a short list of colleges, all of which are Christian colleges, and there are so many different details and options that have to be weighed when trying to choose the one that I want to go to.  Of course, if you know me, or if you are familiar with this blog, you'll see that I have a constant desire to know the future, to have life planned.  I have this deep urge to be able to plan everything in my life, and right now, not knowing where I'll be living or going to school in a year is quite daunting.  I haven't even visited all of the schools that I'm considering yet, but already I feel like I should have a college picked out. 

I'm so worried that I'll make the wrong choice.  What if my favorite school ends up being the most expensive?  What if I can't tell which school God wants me to be at?  Even worse, what if it really doesn't matter to God which school I go to, so long as I'm still following Him?  And how am I supposed to find extra time to pray about this process with school starting in just a few days, with my most challenging schedule yet?

And then, once I've figured out where I'll go to college, how do I figure out what I'm going to do there?  How am I going to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life?  What if I do what I love, but then I can't get a job?  What if I do what will lead to a lucrative career, but end up hating it?  How do I make all of these decisions before I'm even a legal adult?

On Wednesday, after I had just gotten home from a college visit, and feeling the pressure to know where I'll be in a year, I turned on the radio in the car, and this song came on.  There was an initial peace that fell over me when the song began, and the first verse said "I am with you wherever, and where you go is where I am."  The chorus was another part that really spoke to me.  "I love you more than the sun, and the stars that I taught how to shine, you are mine, and you shine for me too, I love you.  Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow I'll say it again, and again, I love you more."  It was like God telling me to calm down.  If He can set the stars and the sun to shine each day and night, He will surely guide me through this process.  He will guide me to the right decision, whether or not it matters to Him exactly which college I'm learning to use the gifts that He gave me to use in order to shine for Him.  He will also guide me towards finding what exactly it is that He wants me to shine with.  He loves me no matter what, and I am His.

The Worst Way to Get in Shape

Whenever I'm stressed out, worried, or angry, the muscles in my stomach tighten. I'll walk around for days, sometimes even weeks, with my stomach muscles clenched. You can imagine how this ends up hurting after a while, though I suppose that it is actually really good for my muscles.

The point here is that my internal emotions venture outside of my head and into the physical part of me, even if it's only a little thing causing me to worry. I obsess over even the smallest issue until it's come to a conclusion. And I know that it goes too far when I have to literally try to loosen my muscles.

It's in those moments when I'm trying to force my muscles to let go that I hear God, as odd as it sounds. God tells me that it's okay to worry about things, but not to let them take control of my life. I can't constantly think about issues. Matthew 6:27 says "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" So as I struggle to loosen the muscles in my stomach, I tell myself that whatever I'm worried about won't last forever, and worrying about it won't do any good, anyway.

I don't know why I worry about things so much, whether it's a personality trait, or something that must be fixed, but either way it isn't good. And though it helps to work my stomach muscles, I'm sure there are much more conventional ways to get in shape than constantly obsessing over issues.

Stress Fractures

So I'm reading one of the things that one of my friends wrote on facebook. There was a question "Have you ever had your heart broken?" her answer was "cracked, but not broken" and that made me think a lot. How many of us are walking around with cracks in our hearts?

We haven't been completely broken, we haven't been kicked and left behind in the dirt, but we've been hurt. A friend has turned out to be someone we didn't know, a short-term relationship has ended, the truth of a lie surfaces, life moves on, right? Of course it does. But that doesn't mean that we're okay.

I find that a lot of times, it's even more difficult to get over small aches like that. Things that hurt, but that don't completely cause an earthquake in your life, because we don't take the time that we need to heal. We aren't focused on it for a very long time, so months, or even years, later it resurfaces, and we realize that it is still causing us pain. This little, minor detail in our lives can bring us to our knees, weeping, so long afterwards. Okay, so maybe I'm being a little dramatic, even a lot dramatic, but you get my point.

Perhaps you are like me, when something bad happens, something that hurts just enough to affect your life, but not enough to bring you to a stand still, you start working on auto-pilot, speed up, and don't stop for long enough to reflect and heal. Or maybe you are walking around in this life full of small little aches and pains from small bad experiences, added together making you feel miserable. Maybe you are totally different. But no matter what, you haven't taken the time to make yourself feel better.

When these pains resurface months later, we try to push it away again, convincing ourselves that we should have been over this long ago, that we can't possibly still be being affected by it now. But guess what, if you've never dealt with a certain experience, it's not leaving your side until you have, and it's only going to grow into a bigger pain.

These little experiences are like getting a stress fracture in your foot from running too much. If you take the time to allow it to heal, you'll be back up and running in no time at all. But if you don't stop to let your body heal itself, and you keep running, that stress fracture is going to get bigger and bigger, and soon enough it's going to be a full blown broken bone. Your foot is going to hurt a lot more than with just a small stress fracture, and it's going to take a much longer time to heal. Plus, there's no ignoring it this time.

So I have two pieces of advice for you, and for myself. The first one is to those of us who have been bottling our pains up for too long, and now we must deal with a lot more hurt than we thought. Always remember Psalm 34:18 "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit". Give your troubles to God. He loves you, and He wants to always be there for you. And guess what. It is okay to hurt, even after all of this time. There isn't a time limit to brokenheartedness or crushed spirits. So let it all go, and give it all to God.

And the second advice is to those of us who are in the middle of a little ache right now. Deal with it now. Ask God to help you heal right now, don't hold it all in for months and months, only for it to resurface even worse. Even if it doesn't necessarily seem major, God doesn't care. Like I said in my earlier post, He loves you, and He wants to always be there for you. A crisis is a crisis if it's a crisis to you. Don't feel like what you're going through is too small to hurt over. Hurt and heal now, before it gets even worse.

Everyone who is walking around with a cracked heart, take the time to let it heal and let God help you. Don't let your heart break into a million pieces before you turn to God.

Breathe, Just Breathe

In, out.
In, out.

I know, I know. There are times when life can seem so overwhelming, and you feel so lost in the world. Believe me, I know. That sense that you're in a race, and just inches behind the next runner, but no matter how hard you push yourself, you can't catch up. There's always something new, always another thing on that to-do list.

I find that I get trapped in what needs to be done a lot. I can't focus on the task in front of me, because I'm too worried about what needs to be done next, and after that. Then there's the added pressure of prioritizing. Does the homework assignment due tomorrow come first? Or does the outline for the huge project due at the end of the week come first? Add friends, and drama, and family, and other school work into the equation, and you're buried head to toe in things that you need to get done before you can sleep for the night.

You feel like you're drowning. You kick your feet, and you push at the water with your arms, but you just can't stay above long enough to take a deep breath. Yeah, life can feel like that sometimes. When you're going, going, going all the time, never taking a moment to stop and smell the roses, you feel lost and exhausted.

So let me tell you, it's time to stop. Breath in, and breathe out. Smell the roses. It is spring-time, after all, the flowers are blooming rapidly. For just a couple of seconds, forget about the long list of things that need to be done, and breathe, just breathe. Take the time to appreciate the wonderful person you are, and the wonderful gifts that God has given you.