daily office | Kimi's Corner

Weary and Worn Out?

Posted on November 4, 2015 by kimicope

That is how I have been feeling. Sometimes (many times) I feel like I STINK at juggling all my roles of mom, wife, friend, sister, daughter, pastor’s wife, hub of our home, sanity maintainer of the house etc. 🙂 (At the end of this post there are 3 videos that go with this if you prefer video to reading. 3 videos because I am so not techie and my videos got cut off before finishing. This post has more content than the videos)

To be honest I can feel like I am dropping most of the balls. But that is a lie. Often times negativity can creep in and lie to me. I can begin to feel inadequate. It is so easy to focus on the areas where I feel weakest in and totally forgot what I do well in.

I know I need to bring back the practice of pausing throughout my day just to focus on the goodness that God has brought into my life.

Life can get busy and the first things to go for me are the healthy life sustaining things like pausing in silence and solitude, prayer, journaling, reading my Bible, exercise, sleep etc.

I learned an AMAZING word picture from Lisa Grace Bryne of The Well Grounded Life Show. (start with chapter 9- she reads her entire book for free. It is like story time for a weary mama). She shared the picture of a fence. She talked about the top crossbeam (not even sure if that is the word- I know zip about wood, construction, blah, blah) and the heavier that beam is the more supporting vertical posts are needed.

So the horizontal crossbeam is our life. Our lives often feel heavy with responsibilities, worries, etc. We go through seasons where it feels heavier than other times. The weight of life will always be something that needs support. We need more supporting posts (items of self care, things that replenish us and give us life) when it gets heavier. But my natural thing is to remove the posts. Wouldn’t that be crazy when building a fence but that is exactly what we do as we build our lives and write our stories. It is totally illogical but I tell myself that I do not have time for those supporting posts.

Life is too busy to:

get 8 hours of sleep
exercise
take a walk
read for enjoyment
read to grow
journal
pause and just be still and focus on all the good in my life
have regular date nights with my hubby
unplug 24 hours every week to just rest and enjoy Sabbath with my family
read my Bible and pray
praise music and dancing 😉

So one by one I begin to take away the supporting posts. No wonder I begin to feel the weight of life coming down on me- I have removed the posts that help carry the weight. It is not usually until the weight feels like too much that a light comes on and I realize I have removed the life sustaining things from my life because I got busy managing details of life (laundry, email, to do list, details- I loathe you).

Yesterday I decided to take the day off. I did not come into work at the church or do anything at the house. I journaled, cried lots, listened to praise music and almost finished reading a book. My only goal for the day was to start and finish the book, Leading on Empty.

So I am trying to bring back what I know my soul needs. The book recommended making a list of things that refuel you and a list of things that drain you. I will never get to fully ditch draining things like laundry but I can add in more replenishing things like watching old videos of my precious kids and pausing throughout my day, more on how I try to do this. I am also going to embrace earlier bedtimes (even though everything in me feels like I’m too young to crash at that time) and try to be asleep by 9:30pm so I can get 8 hours of sleep. Why do I resist early bedtimes? Maybe cause all the cool kids get to stay up late. 😉 It is wiser to get more sleep on that end then sleeping in because rising early gives me peace.

My videos here:
Weary and Worn Out?

Part 2 Of the first video

Part 3 of Weary and Worn Out

*My Friend’s Video- soooo good (This is the friend who encouraged me to start my own videos)