Too many things

 There's just too many things to be faithful to.

When I work through our projected school schedule for each fall, I block out sections of our weeks for housekeeping, because there isn't enough time before, during or after a school day.  I have job jars for the kids to select out of daily, and everyone-does-it-every-day items, and there is always much  that stays undone. Sometimes school work is abandoned (by me) so that I can work toward some assemblance of housekeeping order.  I try to be faithful to keeping our house tidy-ish, and clean-ish.

Lately I have been laying awake at night processing (okay, stressing) what will be needed academically in the fall, and what some of the kids need even before their next grade level begins. I write out a two-page "academic overview" each summer, packed with ideas and details for each subject for each kiddo. When that is finished I write out a two-page "weekly schoolhouse routine" to allot times and days to make sure it is at least theoretically possible to get it all done. I'm desperately trying to be faithful in educating each child as they need.

I set my vitamins on the counter so I remember to take them. Even during pregnancies I had to set an alarm on my phone and take the prenatal while the alarm was still sounding, so I wouldn't forget.  I try to drink lots of water, exercise, eat clean and grow as much of my own food as I can; to take collagen daily and swish coconut oil to repair my poor teeth. I try to pay attention to what my body needs in each season. I'm often on the lookout for clean, healthy options for every category of physical health, because I want to be faithful to caring for our bodies so they can be as close to their Creator's design as I can.

I want to be faithful in teaching our kids scripture, so they know and live and breathe truth and the freedom that  comes from it. 

I want to be faithful in marriage to love deeply and thoroughly, to live out what God had in mind when He made male and female and paired them as one. 

I want to be faithful in watering my garden, so my plants don't die and I have home-grown food to eat.

I want to remember to clean out the car before it gets disgusting.

I want to be diligent about clipping my little kids' toenails, and washing and detangling my girls' hair, and checking tooth brushing so their teeth don't rot. 

I want my friends to feel my care for them by the attention I readily give, faithfully.

I want to be faithful in reading scripture, and using the gifts and talents God built into me.

I want to be faithful to keep the commands and patterns that God laid out for us- fasting, praying, gathering, confession, rooting out bitterness, all the things. 

There's just too many things to be faithful to. 

I've been ruminating on this for a good long while now, and after a beautiful prayer time with some amazing friends, I think it's time we talk about it. 

In the overwhelm that feels like it's crushing me down to my soul, there is ONE thing that I must, must, must turn my faithfulness to. All the other things on my list are good, and some are godly- but there is one that I cannot truly LIVE without. 

I must be faithful in sitting at Jesus' feet. 

I could check every box above and then some, and still not be ALIVE inside. I could keep a clean home, finish every level of school, attend church every sunday, have plenty of "me" time, be toned and tan, and still be lifeless and fruitless and empty and hollow. 

There is ONE thing that fills. There is ONE that makes possible what isn't, and brings life where there isn't. 

I would even venture to say that I could pray every day and read through the bible in a year every year and still be hollow. If I read the words to read the words rather than to find the author, I come up empty. If I pray to whine and feel spiritual relief rather than to hear a response from the Comforter, I do not come away changed. 

Jesus says HE is the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14)

Friends, when the pile that requires faithfulness is swallowing us whole, let us turn our faithfulness to just ONE thing. He- the way, the truth, and the life- will lead us out of the ditch we are lying in. He will show the way when it doesn't seem possible. He will speak and BE truth when our minds have taken us hostage because we can't handle it all. He will be life to our emptiness. 

If we forsake all other to-do lists to lay low at His feet, He will order and pattern our lives alongside us. Jesus knows the world He left us in ( Read his prayer for the disciples and for us in John 17). I am not at all advocating that we forsake all sense of order and give up on home education and become a basket-case wife.

 I am advocating that our very, very top priority- and all that remains when we are crushed- be time spent flat on our faces at Jesus' feet. That is where TRUE life begins:

John 10:10 

   "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (words of Jesus)

I want life, and I want it abundantly. I don't want to be crushed by the worries of this world or my own expectations of myself. I don't want to be knocked out of play by the craftiness of the devil, or buried in my own bitterness. 

I want life, and life abundantly, and I know just where to get it.

Faithfully, at the feet of Jesus.