Help to Avoid Burnout - Part 2
Last week, I shared how I dropped my lunch while I was carrying 455 things in my hands on my way outside. When the lunch bowl dropped, cauliflower rice went everywhere. I tried to clean it all up by hand but there was so much that I ended up grabbing the vacuum cleaner to get the last little bits up. Feeling pretty accomplished and laughing at myself for such a dumb move, I cleaned up the mess and put the vacuum away and went about my day.
A couple days later, I was walking by the vacuum closet and there was this disgusting smell. Now some of you smart Martha Stewart types may have seen this coming a mile away, but me not so much. Any who, I am walking by the closet and it reeks. I start pulling out coolers, beach bags, shopping bags and sniffing them all with no culprit to be found. Then my eyes notice the vacuum and I am quickly reminded of how I cleaned up my cauliflower rice mess a couple days prior.
I sit there thinking to myself, you big doofus, the cauliflower rice is going to stink up the vacuum. It needed to be emptied out. Vacuuming up the mess was really a band aid to the issue. I thought I had cleaned up my mess because the floor looked pretty and there was no evidence of the mess in the room. But the truth was I had just transferred the mess to another location.
Don’t we do that? We think we’ve got it all handled. The activities, our health, the house, the job, the kids… we’ve got all the plates spinning. Meanwhile, one’s falling off over here, so we run, catch it and spin that one faster. Then one kid gets cut from the team, so we go put energy over there and spend that plate. Then the toilet starts making a funny noise, so we call the plumber and spin that plate. The house is a mess, laundry is boiling over, work needs you ASAP.. you get my drift! It’s a delicate dance to say the least.
And goodness gracious y’all, it’s necessary sometimes. All these plates really are blessings. We can’t avoid the crazy all the time. My point is not how to avoid it all (not possible in my opinion), but to how to manage it all better. Sweeping it up with the vacuum and transferring the mess is not the solution. Ask me how I know ;)
It just leads to a stench somewhere else.
Are we just transferring our messes to another spot?
Are you thinking you cleaned it all up, but not really dealing with the issue at hand?
Honestly, I can be so guilty of this. Manage it all, keep everyone afloat, all the while, my insides are slowly fading. My mind, heart and soul are a mess. I have not done one thing for myself and I am a ticking time bomb.
So, what is the solution, you might ask? Well, its margin.
We have to allow margin in our day to day activities. If we are always running from one thing to the next, we don’t have time to actually notice what we are feeling.
We are just letting our life happen to us versus leading our own lives.
Slowing down allows for our minds to process and gain clarity. We are actually really smart with great ideas, but we never give our minds and hearts a minute to lead us in our next steps.
Also, I believe we have the Holy Spirit as a guide. How in the world are we supposed to follow that prompting or leading from the Holy Spirit if we are not slowing down enough to even feel or hear it?
Stick with me next week and I will show you some ways to incorporate more margin into your life.
But this week I want us to just be "noticers". We need be aware and pay attention to our thoughts and actions. Are we taking work deadline stress and transferring it to our child for not cleaning out their lunch box- oops? Are we disengaged from dinner conversation because we’ve got nothing left in the tank?
Food for thought: What are we sacrificing in an effort to get it all done?
Love, B
