When Life Feels Blurry
At the beginning of the week, I felt overwhelm and anxiety creeping in on my chest. It was all just too much. Too much news, too much social media, even too many good resources. I wanted to be the most informed, to try all of the free homeschool tools with my kids, use all of the free exercise apps and I somehow thought I could write a bunch of words in the margins of all of that.
I ended up spending days stomping through the house, yelling at my kids, and picking fights with my husband. My phone was glued to my hand and I repeatedly ignored my social media app limits. I got dressed for exercise that didn’t happen. I felt rage one moment and got teary-eyed the next. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, but got no rest.
Thankfully, I married a man who takes everything to God and knows how to ask Him for help, even when I insist that I don’t need any. I can always count on him to call me out of my messy thoughts and point me back to Jesus. Sam actually woke me up out of my sleep the other night and told me to pray, that very moment, against the fear and anxiety that was trying to infiltrate our home. My first instinct was to write it off as another one of his super-spiritual moments (pray for me—I’m terrible sometimes). I said a quick prayer and tried to go back to sleep. But after a few minutes, I felt God whisper that I was the one who left the door open. It was up to me to gather all of the things I let in and send them on their way. I wish I could tell you that I jumped up out of that bed and got on my knees to pray. But I didn’t. I whispered a few more prayers, admitted out loud to my husband what I heard from the Lord, and then went back to sleep. I knew what I had to do, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it in my exhausted state.
The next morning, I woke up ready to do as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 and “take every thought captive to obey Christ.” I started my day by reading the story of Adam and Eve to my girls over breakfast. And then we started learning our new memory verse (Ephesians 6:1). I stopped reading articles and stopped arguing with people on social media. I prayed and repented. I started a new She Reads Truth Bible reading plan and downloaded Jennie Allen’s new book, Get Out Of Your Head on Audible. I had to clear my mind of the things that were causing my anxiety and fill it up with the things that would point me to Christ.
I’m happy to report that today, after a lot of praying and deep breathing, (as opposed to the angry, noisy breathing I had been doing), I feel calm. It’s not that my anxious thoughts have vanished. It’s just that I know where to take them now. And I remember what I need to focus on: my relationship with God, my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my girls. That doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned about the people outside of these walls. It just isn’t where all of my focus is going anymore. And because I’m easily overwhelmed in this season, I have one goal for each of these relationships. There are tons of fun things I want to do and great ideas I’ve bookmarked and pinned, but these are the three things that I’m starting with.
1. Read my Bible every day // Sometimes I’ll wake up early and do it before the girls wake up. Sometimes, I’ll do it after they’ve gone to bed. Sometimes, I’ll stick them in front of the tv with fruit snacks and have not-so-quiet-time at the kitchen table. After I read the passages of the day and journal a bit in my Give Me Jesus journal, I’ll pray for my family, for our nation, and I’ll pray for my mind. And I will try my best to leave it all with Jesus.
2. Implement at-home date nights with my husband // As a mom of three young kids, it’s really easy for me to completely check out after the kids go down and treat my husband like my roommate. Social distancing has given us the gift of being home together every single night, but I haven’t been treating it like a gift. That needs to change. Sometimes at-home date night will look like watching a movie together after the girls go to bed and other nights it may look like reading books side-by-side on the couch. What it won’t look like is my eyes glued to my phone, half-listening to everything he says because I’m too busy putting my two cents into the latest COVID-19 debate on Facebook.
3. Read aloud more with my kids // This is my one homeschool goal. In full disclosure, I had already attempted and given up on homeschool before all of this started. My 2 and 4-year-olds are signed up to go to preschool in the Fall because God made me a lot of things, but a homeschool mom is not one of them. But there is one thing I love to do that’s homeschool-adjacent and that’s reading aloud to my kids. So I will read them every single book I can get my hands on. We’ll read bible stories and memory verses. We’ll read board books and sound books. We’ll read chapter books and picture books. And hopefully, educational conversations will follow.
That’s it! That’s my plan. Three simple things I can focus on when everything else in the world seems blurry and out of focus. I’ll be sharing our current reading list soon for anyone who wants to join us on #3, but for now I would love to hear what you’re focusing on right now. Let’s all encourage each other and pray for each other. I believe that beautiful things can come out of this time if we’ll focus on the right things. So share below in the comments or post on Instagram or just send me a private message. I would love to hear from you!