Journal Entry - A Great Weight of Responsibility

On the evening of Friday October 24, 2008, I was sitting in our family room with my young children, surrounded by a pile of clothes. The laundry was Megan’s job, but she went to a school party that night and offered to pay me $5 if I would put away the clothes for her. I started to put them away but noticed they were horribly folded, so I set about re-folding them. I don’t mind folding clothes, and it provided a good opportunity for thinking (without picking my fingers to the bone.)

As I was sitting there, I began to feel the full weight of all of what I’ve been trusted with, and the even heavier weight of the knowledge that I’m failing miserably at being faithful with any of it. God was right there with me, gently leading my thoughts. It suddenly came into my mind what I needed to do.

I called my husband and asked him if he’d be willing to take himself and the five children to his mom’s house (in the mountains outside of Colville, WA) for the weekend so I could work on getting my house (and the rest of my life) in order. I simply couldn’t handle it anymore. Every drawer and cupboard, every table and closet, every corner and room needed to be gone through and sorted.

The burden of the paperwork was especially heavy to me. We have a filing cabinet that was so full, it hadn’t been used for any new filing since 2005. We have stacks and boxes and plastic bins of paperwork that we can’t find anything in because there’s no order or organization to it at all (except sometimes a mildly consistent date order). Simply trying to find something to do with the mail was a daily burden that I didn’t want to deal with, so it kept piling up and adding to the stress of everything I wasn’t doing.

Well, my husband wasn’t able to take the kids that weekend because of several different complications. But he said he would take them to their Grandma’s the next Friday (Halloween). I spent a couple of hours on Saturday the 25th blogging, but on Sunday I felt very strongly that God had called me to a blogging fast until I got my life under control. I can’t even begin to describe how hard it was for me, and how freeing at the same time.

Every time I sat down at a computer at home or at work that week, the first thing I wanted to do was check all of my favorite blogs. But I also noticed how much more I got done without having that drain on my time, and how much clearer and more focused my thoughts and prayers were.

My husband did take the kids to his mom’s the evening of Halloween. The whole time they were gone, I felt a driving compulsion to make the most efficient use possible of every single moment. My plan was to work 24/7, only stopping briefly for catnaps when absolutely necessary, and to take a couple hour break on Sunday morning to go to church. (Which I didn’t actually end up doing because I was beyond exhausted and every single bone and muscle in my body hurt.)

I felt that I absolutely had to get through my craft room (which had become the family’s junk resting place), the filing cabinet, and the most recent stack of paperwork. Because to try to do any of those things with a two-year-old in the house would have been next to impossible and pull-my-hair-out frustrating.

So I attacked all of those things with gusto, passion, and energy. It didn’t take long, though, before my mind was almost completely numb and I was running on automatic pilot. I couldn’t even pray. So I finally put in an old favorite CD (Glad: A Capella Hymns) and God used the beautiful music and brilliant truth of those treasured songs to breathe joy and energy back into my exhausted mind, body and spirit. Not that I wasn’t still tired--I was--but at least I was able to keep going.

By the end of the weekend, everything was done that I’d felt such an urgency about. And I felt far more hopeful and enthusiastic about getting the rest of the house organized. All – and I mean ALL – of the glory and credit goes to God for what was accomplished. Every single time my stupid pride would rear its ugly head and try to take credit for what was going on, I would nearly choke on tears of frustration.

God birthed the ideas, He gave me the strength, He filled in the gaps when I didn’t know what to do next, He led me back to that awesome CD (again and again), He kept me focused, and He kept reminding me again and again that it was Him in me that was doing the work – and that I just needed to trust and rest in Him.

I want to say a special thank you to Dianna for praying for me and for her words of encouragement and admonition and for her powerful and effective prayers. Thank you, Beautiful Sister! I love you!