Be Still And Know

It happens every Saturday. Toward the end of the week, I build up a big mental list of everything I'm going to get done with all of my copious free time over the weekend. I plan to be a weekend warrior and conquer housework and yard work and craft projects and a massive word count on my novel-in-progress, and all the other stuff I tell myself I don't have time for during the week. I go to bed on Friday night with that To Do list swimming in my head, and I wake up in the morning rarin' to go.

And then I sit down to work on my novel and realize that I'm actually quite exhausted and all I really want to do is sit there and catch up on my shows and my reading. Which I then proceed to do, for the entire day, all the while beating myself up about it.

I've been dealing a lot lately with discouragement and anxiety. Ever since the economy went kerplooey (again... or would that be "kerplooeyer"?) over the summer, my freelance business has slowed way, way down, and since my last regular client was forced to "take a break" from working with me, I've been running around like a frantic chicken, putting irons in the fire and digging ditches to lay the groundwork for income streams, and nothing seems to be panning out. I seem to have it in my head that if I can just stay in motion and prove (to who? I don't even know) what a hard worker I am, eventually it will all pay off and I'll be rewarded for my efforts. But it feels like nothing I do succeeds, and all my hard work is for naught.

I'm also struggling with envy and coveting. I look around and see people with the same talents and skills that I have who are enjoying great success and reaping the fruits of their labor, and I can't help but wonder, what am I missing? What am I doing wrong? What am I not doing enough of?

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. –Philippians 4:19

I believe that God is my provider. The above promise has been put to the test again and again since I lost my steady job two years ago and embarked on a freelance career. Somehow, some way, we always, always have what we need. Sometimes I have no idea how we're going to make our mortgage or pay all of our bills, but the money has always turned up when we need it, sometimes just in the nick of time. God's provision has never failed, not once.

But if I really believe in God's provision, then why am I constantly busting my rear and wearing myself out trying to do everything by my own might? Why am I always so stressed out about our finances, and anxious about my business? Why am I neglecting my home and my family and time that could be spent in Bible study and prayer and meditation in order to manufacture work for myself under the guise of building my portfolio?

Why am I so worn out at the end of the week when nobody has actually hired me to do anything?

As I've prayed about this recently, I feel like I'm finally starting to get the message that God's been trying to send me for the last couple of years. The Bible is full of promises about God's provision, and of commands to refrain from worry. Seek Him first and all else will be added unto you. Be anxious for nothing. Bring ALL things to Him in prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy.

The Sabbath isn't just a day off each week. It's an ongoing state of believing and trusting that God is in control, that He cares for us and wants to take care of us, and He wants us to relax and let Him do so.

Growing up, my dad never let us rest. We were always expected to work to earn our keep, to prove our worth. Now that I'm a married adult, my husband does his best to contribute and provide as much as his disability allows him to do so, but as the only totally able-bodied adult in our household, I feel tremendous pressure, mostly from myself, to be the primary breadwinner, and when my efforts fall short, as they so often do, I feel a deep sense of failure.

But I feel like my Heavenly Father is trying to get me to see that He's there, taking care of me, providing for me and my family, and that I don't have to constantly work to earn His care. He gives it freely, simply because He loves me. And he wants me to learn how to rest in that knowledge.

So this is what I'm working on for the moment. I'm going to slow down and enjoy my free time. I'm going to make time for God each day, and for my husband, and to pay some badly needed attention to my house and my poor, raggedy yard. I'm going to make time to take proper care of myself and prepare my body, as well as my heart and mind, for another pregnancy. And I'm going to allow myself to spend time on things I enjoy instead of making work for myself that nobody's paying me for.

And instead of worrying about what will happen when my husband's financial aid for this semester runs out, I'm going to work on trusting that God will open doors for us and that clients, customers and readers will show up when we need them.

Not by my might, Lord, nor by my power, but by YOUR spirit. Here I am, letting go and depending on You. Amen.

Little By Little

As I stood on my back patio and surveyed the back yard, my stomach sank. That old, familiar feeling of overwhelmed panic gripped my chest and sapped all of my strength, making me want to do nothing but crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head and forget anything ever happened.

It was shortly after daybreak on May 13, 2010. My husband and I had already been awake for hours, roused in the middle of the night by the sound of a freight train bearing down on our house mingled with the faint wail of storm sirens. The power was out, and everything was pitch black. The radio told us not to worry. It was merely high, straight-line winds, they said. As long as we stayed indoors, we should be safe. Later, those high winds were revealed to be about half a dozen small tornadoes that tore through Tulsa, Oklahoma and the surrounding area, one of which ripped a path right through my neighborhood.

Thankfully, nobody got hurt that night. But as the power was gradually restored throughout the city and the light of dawn emerged, it became clear that the tornadoes had left behind their fair share of destruction. Our friendly neighborhood tornado had destroyed roofs and demolished fences, to say nothing of what it did to the trees, still weak and recovering from a major ice storm that coated northeastern Oklahoma at the end of 2007. We were among the lucky few who sustained no major property damage. Even so, as the light of day showed us a yard covered in fallen limbs, many of them big and heavy, all I could think about was what a giant chore clean-up would be.

Part of my consternation stemmed from the fact that my husband is disabled. Although I knew he’d do what he could to help, I also knew that, unless I asked for outside help, the bulk of the chore would fall to me -- and anyone I could think to ask would already be busy cleaning up their own property. We live on my freelance income and my husband’s SSDI, which meant hiring some help wasn’t in the budget. As I envisioned having to take several days off to deal with the debris, my stress began to mount. As a freelancer, I don’t get paid vacation or personal days. Time spent on yard work is time that could be spent earning precious income.

For days, I did nothing. Watching my neighbors work diligently on cleaning up their own yards, I felt irrational guilt for ignoring my own mess, and the chore grew bigger and more impossible in my mind. Nearly a week passed before I reached a point where I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. Without letting myself think, I dove in, cutting up the biggest branch into manageable chunks. All I had was a hand saw, and my arm grew tired pretty quickly. I prayed and asked the Lord to grant me the strength to get this job done by myself. That’s when I recalled a line of scripture from Isaiah 28:10:

“Order on order, line on line, a little here, a little there.”

As this word came to me, I realized that the only one turning this chore into such a Herculean task was me. Nobody said it had to be done all at once, or that it had a deadline. It was only my own foolish anxiety that had insisted otherwise. The entire project, like the branch I was cutting, could be broken down into manageable pieces. As this simple concept dawned on me, all I could do was shake my head at myself and laugh.

The context of this verse is to illustrate rebellious Israel’s impatience with the Lord’s treating them like children by explaining things that should be obvious. Unfortunately, the lesson of “little by little” is one that is often not obvious to me, and I have to learn it again and again, even though it presents itself to me every day. As a writer, I build stories one word at a time, and as a web designer, I build web sites in stages. Even life itself isn’t meant to be lived all at once. We take it one year, one month, one day, one minute at a time.

Once I remembered that, as with everything else in life worth doing, cleaning my yard was a process, my anxiety fled, and I was able to look past it at how fortunate and blessed we were to only have tree limbs to clean up when others around us had roofs to replace and fences to repair. I even began to enjoy the work as I started approaching it with an attitude of thanksgiving. Working at it a little each day, cleaning up our entire lot took only two weeks to accomplish. Each day, as I worked to break down large branches and haul bundles of wood to the curb, I meditated on this lesson, on how small steps add together to form a greater whole. The storm that surprised and frightened us that dark morning in May ended up serving as the ultimate illustration I needed to drive this lesson home. This time, the lesson took hold, and it has yet to let go.

The Solace of the List

Are you a list person? I so very definitely am. Making lists gives me a sense of comfort and control that is just this side of irrationally wacky. Or maybe it's on the other side and I crossed that line five turn-offs ago. Is there a way I can tell? One that doesn't involve helping to pay the student loans of a person who went to school for six to eight years to earn a piece of paper that says they can officially tell me so?

I know! I'll make a list!

All kidding aside, the truth is that list-making has saved my sanity on a really big number of occasions. When I have so much to do I can't figure out where to start? Make a list. When life dumps a big truckload of doody on top of me and I don't know how to dig myself out? Make a list. When I've got a big decision to make? List. Wanting to feel organized without having to actually organize anything that isn't bullet points on paper? Say it with me now... LIST!

I think that last item sums it up, why I'm so list-dependent. On the To Do variety, making a check-mark gives me a lovely sense of accomplishment. On every other kind, it helps me organize my thoughts, realize my options, gives me the feeling, even if I never do one blasted thing that's on the list, that I am making a PLAN. And having a PLAN means I am in CONTROL. That's right, move along, no chaos to see here. See? I have a list to prove it.

To illustrate how far this goes, I even have my own wiki. The first page of this wiki is a list of all of the projects that I'm either committed to, need to commit to, or wish I had the time to do, in that order. And each item in this first list is a link to a sub-list, a To Do list of things that need to happen to accomplish that project. Some of my sub-lists even have sub-lists, and on and on and on to infinity and beyond.

Neurotic? Sure, but who isn't these days? If you share this particular neuroses, then you are a kindred spirit and we should be friends. And also you might want to check out Wikispaces, where you can create and organize your own list-wikis completely free of charge, listing and linking and sublisting and interlinking all of your lists into a thing of freakish obsessive-compulsive beauty that only you can fully appreciate and understand. This is where my sanity lives. Won't you join me there?

My new boss wears stripes

This month continues to be insane. Between Fizzgigg, getting sick, and this week's visit from out-of-town relatives, my sleeping pattern is completely whacked out, and my motivation is nil. What I need more than anything is a long weekend of sleeping, novel-reading, and tequila-based cocktail (hee!) sipping on a secluded beach somewhere on the Yucatan to calm my frazzled nerves and reset and recharge my brain to then tackle everything anew (yes, my ideal vacation is a Corona commercial). But since that's so tragically far from actually happening as to be comical, I'll settle for a new system that removes the anxiety of decision-making from the question, "What should I be doing right now?"

Enter the concept of Time Striping, which might just be my sanity's salvation. I don't even have to worry about how to approach it, since the article's author so helpfully provided a downloadable form. All I have to do is think this one time about how to organize my work day, plug it into the schedule, and I'm done. Then my wheels start spinning at any given time of day and I start to suffer decision paralysis, I need only glance at the schedule, and it tells me what to do. It's 10 AM? I should be blogging! It's after 2? Time to file my inbox attachments! No guesswork! No guilt at neglecting twenty other things for the sake of another! I like this plan. We shall see if this plan likes me.