Sometimes a cloud of tired hangs over your head. You know what I am talking about right? The  busying demands of life  pressing against every corridor of your mind until you think you might scream. Your wiser self informs you that if you scream at some random moment those around you might raise eyebrows and wonder things about you that, while possibly true, we’d never want revealed (laughing). We all feel the pressure. A kid or two or three or four or more scurrying about your feet, pulling at your time, your waist, your patience in ways that will refine if we go at this life with our God. We feel the dizzying spin of too many errands, too much to cook and clean and manage. And then there’s this thing in me (and it may or may not be in you) that always wants to make every. single. thing. pretty and that takes time and energy and sometimes cash. And there’s the budget to keep and not blow and there’s people to call and forms to fill out and not nearly enough time to double check my grammar or all the run-on sentences on this or any post (warm, hilarious smile), and there’s this unyielding pressure and then a kid or more starts screaming and the most used word in the English language is uttered yet again… and you’re home so you know it’s you they are talking to, crying out for, “Momma!!!”

And what do you do if what you’d like to do is hide and retreat and pretend as if all of the stuff is done and all the children tended to. How do you really live like Mary sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ listening when all of life is pretty dizzying?

We’ve taken the priority off people and put it on to to do lists. It’s really the saddest way to live isn’t it? When you’re so tired, but it’s not out of being spent on others…. Isn’t sometimes just out of the daily grind and the too much, the good stuff we signed up for? And how do you stop this spin cycle?

You learn to sit. You learn to listen to God and grow and go with Him. You learn what it means to discern His will and delight in His presence.

Sometimes what He wants from us isn’t our ability to accomplish so much, as much as it is to know Him and to love Him and to enjoy Him.

The work of our lives revolves around Him. There’s plenty He has called us to do, but can we do it without  being with Him, without walking with Him? Can you rightly accomplish and do the will of God without first listening to Him speak? He gently woos our souls from folly. He sweetly guides us into the joy of His presence. He will lead our feet into fruitful paths of peace. He will teach us everything we need to know. We can stop spinning dizzy, and we really can do His will. He never hurries His children; He is patient with us. We can miss Him all along our way, or today, this day, we can decide to follow Jesus. The rest can wait.

Now, let me go get those babies. They’re still calling for me… the sweetest name I’ve ever been called, “Momma!” Let’s not teach our precious ones to hurry; let’s teach by way of our lives to listen, to listen attentively to our God….

But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her,“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:40-42