Wow! What a whirlwind of a week this has been! Both my mind (and body) seem to be spinning at full tilt with little hope of a slower speed anytime soon. And, before I get any farther into things, this is a drawing Abigail did online with "paint." She will sit for hours at the computer and compose stories, then illustrate them..if I allow her to sit at the computer that long. But when she is doing something 'educational' I usually allow a lot more freedom.
On another note, I have been thinking about the wheel image some more (see previous post). I came across this in my Power of a Praying Wife study guide this morning from lesson 7. I'll quote Stormie Omartian and add a few thoughts afterwards.
"We also cannot move into all God has for us if we do not have the right priorities. God wants to be first in our lives, and if He isn't, we are not going to see life happen the way we want it to. Because our lives can get so busy, we can easily find ourselves out of balance. We start sacrificing our health, our time with the Lord, our spouse, and our marriage on the altar of busyness......When you ask God to help you and your husband establish right priorities, He will do so.....The Bible says to love God above all else and "others" second. Our most significant other is our spouse. When we put God first and our spouse second, then everything else will fall into place..."
"Out of balance"--just a random thought here, but I think of my washing machine. When it is out of balance, it jumps around in the laundry room..moving from its place. Water puddles cover the floor, so I have a big mess to clean up. And, the machine stops working...just sits there...until I reach down and manually redistribute things to a more balanced state. Then, it works again just fine....until it gets out of balance again. The cause of the problem....usually the weight is not distributed right because I am trying to do too much laundry at one time. With only a little thought, I found this to be a pretty accurate spiritual analogy in my life.
And, I will say that as a wife and mom, it is very easy to put my child above my spouse and I have been guilty many times. Also, I can attest to how being busy means that our health suffers (how many times have I had an illness because I did not take care of myself when working crazy hours??). It is also easy to let time with the Lord slide....you don't feel great so you want to stay in bed a little longer....been there, done that??? I have!! I do like that last sentence....when we put God first and our spouse second, then everything else WILL fall into place. The hard part is, sometimes that "everything else" is screaming for my attention.
Today I have had to remind myself of those priorities....'everything else' has been some school related issues/responsibilities which are more demanding of my time than they have been in the past. These things are important, but I felt a bit of an ache in the pit of my stomach as I jotted 3 more activities on my calendar that is already pretty full for that time period. While I KNOW God has set this course for me and my family, sometimes the details have to be handled in a way that require a sacrifice of time. So,I have to remind myself.....sometimes almost even verbalizing it...God first, Bruce second...Abigail third....other things next.....
So, Thursday's thoughts are busy ones, but maybe by next Thursday, things will slow down a bit???????
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