I love to go for walks. I love to shove my headphones into my ears, turn on Spotify, and tune the world out. I love to walk with my family and vent about life. I love to walk with my roommate and dog and let Rory go nuts at the top of the hill. I’ll walk in the blazing heat because I have an urge to get out. I’ll walk in a t-shirt, flannel, sweatshirt, and Carhartt winter jacket with 3 pairs of pants on and 4 pairs of socks. I just love to walk.
Sometimes I find myself outside enjoying my time to turn my brain off, and then it comes - a rain drop. I always tell myself, “You’re not gonna melt, finish this mile.” I’m sure you can see where this is going. I’m in a tshirt and holding my phone in my hand and halfway through finishing the mile - the sky opens up…pouring down rain.
As much as I love walking, I hate wearing wet clothes. Not to mention that I’m more concerned about shielding my phone that getting home.
This is where I’ve been. I’ve been doing what I love and a little rain starts coming. I tell myself that I can make it…and the skies open up. And by skies I mean emails, phone calls, and people with bad attitudes. And here I am...no umbrella with my phone in my hand open to the elements.
I feel the gross wet clothes of life sticking to me. But instead of drying off and changing, I’m just sulking about how awful it feels. I’ve let doubt and discouragement overtake my mentality. I feel like I’m in the flood for 40 days, but without an ark. You get it - I’m being so dramatic and irrational.
People try to encourage me, try to help me prioritize, try to get me to smile and my stubbornness has pushed them away. I set unrealistic expectations on myself. I told myself that if I prioritize enough, if I work hard enough, if I stay late enough or come in early enough, I will get weeks worth of stuff done now.
But God intervened and simply told me this - you can’t prioritize your work life and personal life, if your true priority has become your “if I have time.” He meant Him. I was trying to prioritize hour by hour what I could get done to meet unrealistic goals on my own, but was cutting lunch, which means cutting out my devotional time. And if I wasn’t intentionally talking to Him for that hour, that meant all the hours before I wasn’t thinking about Him or talking to Him leading up to that time or following up with our conversation with Him the rest of the day.
And if my true priority wasn’t in check, the rest of it falls apart. You’re stuck in the rain, no umbrella, wet clothing, and phone out. But if your priorities are in check, you find shelter in the rain, you’ll have an umbrella, or heck maybe you’ll gauge the storm a little better and make it home before it pours.
Deuteronomy 6:5 tells us to love God with our wholebeing. If loving God is our priority, the rest of our lives follow suit. Now that doesn’t mean, I’ll accomplish weeks worth of stuff overnight, but it means He’ll equip me to do His will, He’ll strengthen me to do His work, and He’ll encourage me to follow His plan.
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