This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 47, “Flipping the Switch”, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/flipping-the-switch
Do you ever feel like a switch gets flipped in your body that turns something off? That’s how I have felt the past few months. Something got flipped off. My body is tired, my thoughts are slower, and my creativity is dried up. I turned on my computer the other day, ready to plan out this year’s episodes, and then proceeded to just sit and stare at the screen blankly. There is a chapter for my book on moms in the Bible that I have been unable to finish for months. Her story is there, waiting to come out, I just cannot seem to find the words for it.
This frustrates me.
I do not like loose ends, or projects unfinished. I am typically efficient with my tasks, good at multitasking, and enjoying checking things off my list in a timely, if not speedy, manner.
I do not like muddle or trapped thoughts. I value clarity of thought and speech. Usually if I cannot put something to words easily, a brief verbal processing session with my husband or a friend will clear up the blockage.
I was sharing my struggle with one such friend the other day. Her suggestion—to share how I am feeling in an episode.
Doing so feels a bit more vulnerable than I have felt in previous episodes. I want to be real on here, and feel I have been, but also I fear being seen as inadequate, incapable, or simply the full mess that I truly am.
Because I really am a mess.
Perhaps that is the wrong way to say that. My identity is not being a mess, but I am messy. I have emotional highs and lows. I have days where I am productive and days where I am not. There are days, or moments, when I am gentle parenting and other days, or weeks, when I yell all the time. Sometimes it seems as though I can conquer the world, and other times as though the world has most definitely conquered me.
Oh yes, my life, my mind, my heart are quite messy.
My kids and I recently discovered music by Slugs and Bugs. Check out the song Mexican Rhapsody if you want a good laugh.
The first song on the album titled “Under Where?” says:
God makes messy things beautiful
When you put ’em in his hands
God makes messy things beautiful
Like only he can
It is an encouraging reminder but also a convicting one when you get to the line “when you put ‘em in his hands”.
One of the things I have realized, as I have been trying to figure out what is going on with me, is that I have not been spending very much time with God lately. Not really. Sure, there are the popcorn prayers and the “Oh Jesus help” moments when I am with my kids, but what I have mostly been consuming are historical fiction novels, a Netflix documentary and Hallmark movies, and you can’t forget my daily nap.
When that switch flips in me, I kind of just check out. It feels like work to take in real things like God’s word, to actually seek him out in my day, to invest in my relationship with him. Even as I was working on this episode, I felt myself wanting to just sleep instead of think.
During a self-care group at a residential program I was working at, we were putting together blends of essential oils. There were many options of oils to choose from and the instructor recommended we smell them. She said that the ones you had the strongest negative reactions to were often the ones that your body actually needed.
Sometimes, the things that we need to do to help ourselves are often the things that feel like too much work. Exercising regularly, eating healthy, consistently taking medication, talking to a therapist—those are some of the ones that I have been increasing in discipline in this past year.
For some reason, though, my spiritual health, which is the most important, is the one that I seem to neglect or even pull away from the most. Considering how our body, mind, heart and soul are all one, by neglecting that aspect of my health, I am negatively impacting all the rest of me. Why is it so hard?
I need Jesus.
That’s just all there is to it. Without him, I don’t work, I am incomplete.
Jesus put it quite bluntly in John 15:4-5 that we can do nothing unless we abide in him. We can’t parent well, love our spouses well, do well at our jobs, be a good neighbor, etc unless we are abiding in him. Our fruit simply does not grow unless our branch is connected to the tree of life. And Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).
Without him, we are lost, but with him….well, that’s a different story. Afterall, Jesus is our source of all good things.
When we come to him, weary and burdened, he gives us rest as promised in Matthew 11:28-30. When we come to him, we encounter his gentle and humble heart that doesn’t shame or condemn us but teaches and restores us.
He fills us with peace as we turn to him and trust in him (Phil. 4:6). He reminds us that in him we are more than conquerors (Rom. 8:37). It might feel like the world has us beat but that is not even close to the true story. It is actually Christ who has overcome this world (John 16:33) and by his grace all believers have that same power inside of us (Matt. 28:18-20).
He gives us daily bread, our manna as Kim Johnson reminded us in last week’s episode, as we need it.
There is so much more about Christ to be found in his word.
This week I have been more intentional about picking up my Bible and rediscovering who Christ is. Even in those few days, those short moments spent reading, I have found my heart stirred and my mind awakening.
I still don’t know what next week’s episode will be. That mom in the Bible’s story is still locked somewhere in my mind. The switch is not fully turned on, but I’m sliding back up the dimmer switch.
Do you relate? Do you ever feel as though you are inwardly, or even outwardly, pulling away from what it is you are to be doing, from life itself? Where do you go? What do you turn to? How is Christ involved in all of it?
Seek him today for the manna, for the grace, for this new day.
Lyssa Stoyko 