by guest author Vicki Lewis
“God is both our Director and our Audience,” suggests author Jean Fleming in her book, Between Walden and the Whirlwind: Living the Christ-Centered Life. So where, I wonder, is the balance between retreating from the world and being caught up in a whirlwind of activities? How much stress is okay and how much stress is too much?
Handling a certain amount of load in our lives is a good thing. The problem arises, however, when there is an overload situation. A coffee cup was designed to hold a certain amount of coffee; more than that and the cup will overflow. Four tea cups stack nicely, but the addition of a fifth cup causes the entire stack to fall over. Each of us can carry a specific amount of weight, but we cannot safely carry five pounds more than that.
As homeschooling moms we are – now here’s a news flash for you! – finite. God has lovingly designed us with limits – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. What are your limits in these four areas? Physical limits are relatively easy to discern and measure; but what about your emotional limits? I can carry one person perhaps physically, but how many people can I carry emotionally? How many hundreds of questions can I answer in a day and how many decisions can I make before my life starts to topple over?
Take a good look at this page. Do the words all run from edge to edge of the paper? Is the writing solid from the top of the page to the bottom? Could you read it like that? Every page of type has something called margin – white space with nothing in it that causes the important words to be easily read.
What does a page from your life look like? Is it marginless? Or is there breathing space around your days?
Because He first loved us,
Vicki
This was originally published on Vicki’s blog called Fresh Enthusiasm: Growing in Grace and in the Knowledge of Jesus Christ. Find her posts at freshenthusiasm.com. Watch for part 2 of this article coming soon!
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oh my! I really needed this post today! As a full time out of the home worker, homeschooling parent, babysitter to the grands, wed thru sat and the chief cook and bottle washer I often feel OVERWHELMED to say the least.