The contents that are flinging about erratically and a lot are happening with them, those are work and commitments. I’ve been really busy with working both at the Broncos about 25 hours a week, and then keeping up with clients also. I’ve taken on some new clients and projects in addition to what I’ve been doing. Some weeks are really slow. But lately, it’s been quite hectic. I go to work at the Broncos, and then I come home and work some more. The days I don’t go to the Broncos, I often spend most of the day doing the more time-extensive client projects. On the weekends, we are trying to spend time with family so we are usually up in Fort Collins or down in Colorado Springs. I’m also trying to keep up friendships as best as I can both here and back in CA.
If one of these elements were flinging about solitarily, then there’d be no trouble. The problem keeps coming when multiple elements come off the side of the washing machine and collide with each other, wrapping themselves in a matted knot of sorts that leaves me to use both hands and all effort to attend to them to get them back to where they need to be, individual pieces that do not need to intertwine. Unfortunately, with an off-center container, they’re bound to entangle again in time, leaving me back at the beginning of the same problem.
The contents that are remaining plastered to the side and not a lot are happening with them because they are forced to make room for the erratic elements, those are my marriage and the beneficial things I need to do for myself. I put these on the back burner of responsibilities because they are more forgiving than clients and employers, and seem to be moreso than family and friends. I have not been investing well in my marriage and in John. I treat him more like a roommate at times than a husband. In my mind and my heart, I know and want him to be the first priority, but my actions have fallen so short in actually acting upon this. I get wrapped up in my “responsibilities” instead, and I miss the most important things entirely. I have not been doing things that are beneficial for myself in the ways that I need to. This has been difficult because I just don’t feel like there is much time to do so, so I don’t. This requires an evaluation of how I am spending my time. As much as I hate taking something away or saying no, that is what I need to consider. And so, these things stay plastered to the side, for there is no room for them to come free in the way they need to be.
I have always been a serious person and have created responsibilities for myself on top of what I already have. It’s this instinctive nature in me that I can’t quite curb. I make things responsibilities that don’t need to be. For example, most of the women in my life in Colorado live down in the Springs. I’ve always felt that I had to go down to the Springs and initiate time with them. But in this last week—I’ve been so blessed to have three of them willing to drive up to Castle Rock just to spend time with me and save me the drive. That has been mind-blowing and an incredible blessing to me. Yet it reveals the deluded weight of responsibility that I have been carrying—that somehow, if I don’t make all the effort in a relationship, then I’m failing or not living up to my end of the bargain. But, it is not fully up to me.
I also don’t have to say yes to every project. I especially don’t have to agree to all of my client’s deadlines—particularly when a lot of them are last minute. I am learning how to balance this in the real world, especially in being a new and starting out. I don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, but I do know that I agree on other people’s terms a bit too often and easily, and that creates a heavier weight of responsibility than it needs to be.
Yet all in all, I believe firmly that everything that is in this container is deemed good and purposeful by the Lord…it’s part of this season and all that it brings.
In My Utmost for His Highest yesterday, this is written:
“We must distinguish between the burden-bearing that is right and the burden-bearing that is wrong. We ought never to bear the burden of sin or of doubt, but there are burdens placed on us by God which He does not intend to lift off, He wants us to roll them back on Him. "Cast that He hath given thee upon the Lord."
Everything in this current container of life are “burdens” that God has placed on me because He desires me to learn how to deal with them. The problem has been lying in the fact that I have been seeking out these grand answers of how to balance life, how to invest in marriage, how to have boundaries with work, how to maintain relationships, and more. The reality is that the type of grand answer I am looking for doesn’t exist—it is not a formula to be discovered and then applied to solve the problem. The problem has been lying in the fact that I am carrying these “burdens” God has put on me, but I am not rolling them back on the Lord. And sometimes, these responsibilities have felt “overwhelmingly crushing.”
Yesterday I had reached my limit of how much I could take in and handle. I went to bed exhausted from the day and exasperated at how else I could’ve dealt with it. This morning, I drove to work at 6:30 a.m., my normal time to do so. It was a typical spring morning in Colorado, but I haven’t experienced a spring morning here in 6 years. When I left the house, it was lightly snowing. Three minutes down the road, I found myself in a bowl of clouds with the blue sky fully visible above me. Three more minutes down the road, it was really dark and overcast again. Up the hill a bit later, I saw the break of the sun over the clouds and I was above all these layers of clouds breaking, and it was breathtaking.
I wound down the hill for a few minutes taking it all in, and proceeded to get on the highway. I quickly entered incredibly dense, dark, and cold fog. I drove about 5 minutes and it started raining. A few minutes after that, I was back in the dense fog, but it had this incredible warm glow in it. Then down the road, there were high clouds and it was overcast. Close to work, it was raining again and darker, but the sun was peeking through and clearing it all out.
As I was driving, I couldn’t help but identify so much with the changing surroundings around me. It was the perfect symbolism of how I have been reacting in these past couple of weeks due to being “off center.” In all of it, I know that God is with me and I have felt His presence tremendously, but I have been perceiving my circumstances in so many different manners and ways, and it often changes rapidly. I’ll go from a moment of extreme praise and thanksgiving, to one of downheartedness and frustration. I’ll go from a moment of passion to one of apathy. And this is not me. I am normally a pretty consistent person. I have not felt like I should be these last couple of weeks.
And I want the grand answer and formula for how to fix it. I’ve delayed the opportunity for freedom because I’ve been waiting for the grand answer. Yet, in my mind and my heart I’ve known that there isn’t a grand answer that’s going to be found in this world, but rather a simple one found from abiding in Christ and listening to Him. I believe it was given last night:
If we undertake work for God and get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility will be overwhelmingly crushing; but if we roll back on God that which He has put upon us, He takes away the sense of responsibility by bringing in the realization of Himself.” Oswald, 4-13.
I need to realize my limits and understand my priorities. But most of all, I need to surrender all these things I consider or create to be responsibilities and let them be in the hands of the Lord. I can’t make myself the center or necessity to things happening or being done. I’m surely to be an off-center washing machine that way, and things will only continue to either be plastered to the side or flinging about erratically. I am not the center--God is. He is so gracious to take my burdens upon Himself, and that is an gift of grace I need to embrace fully.
