The Steadfast Heart

My soul could use a lift this week. I get ahead of myself too often with the to-do’s and the stress and the striving. I set expectations for all of my achievements to feel like they’re significant successes, but what I think it actually simplifies to is just busyness. I have exhausted myself by my own busyness.

In honest reflection, I experience loneliness more than some people might, so I fill the void of it with the things that make me feel like I contribute something into the world. I’m good at staying busy. While I long for community, I settle for taking on tasks in my day-to-day. But I think the side effect of the busyness at times is a fogginess of what is true.

You’d think I’d love social media as a means to connect to a world I feel isolated from. But the reality is, it plays into the envy of what I’m not, what I don’t have, or who I’m not with. Every time I think I’m good to handle scrolling, I’m confronted with the fact I’m not. Because seeing people get to experience the things I long for with the people I’ve been missing stings so bad I couldn’t breathe through my own tears even this week. Social media always tends to shine a light on my own emotional immaturity in exhausting ways.

I’ve learned I have a tendency to withdraw when I hit those emotional plateaus. I withhold information about myself that I freely share when I’m in a healthy space, until I can’t hold it anymore and it spews out sideways. The last two days have been spew days for innocent bystanders caught in my wake. Consider this my public apology to the women in the Central parking lot.

I’ve been feeling a tension coming on as the transition into the fall school year is coming. I fear another isolating winter is ahead of me. I miss so many of my family members, now spread out into multiple states across the country with the inability to make future plans to see them. The boys will have a new schedule for daycare that I can’t help and will put a strain on my ability to work productively, regularly. I’ve taken my son to the doctor for unscheduled visits multiple times in the span of 3 days and my mind can only think in deductibles and money lost from not working. I feel shame that my mind goes to that before it goes to gratitude that he’s healthy.

There are too many bridges I’m trying to cross before I get to them. And what comes out in conversation is that my soul feels strained right now. I feel the stress and also the ridiculousness of it. Fifteen minutes ago I was sighing heavily at spilled milk on every cushion and cover on my armchair. Before that I had a headache from my kids arguing over a toy. An hour ago it was a missing invoice I needed to record for work. It’s laughable at how much I sweat the small stuff. If only I could laugh right now and not take myself so seriously!

So I’m not sure if it’s a matter of my mental busyness taking on too many things at once that adds to what I’m experiencing or a failure to yield to the Holy Spirit more readily. Or both. But I know I’ve steered myself off course and lost hold of the truth instead of clinging to it.

I found encouragement in these words penned by Alicia Britt Chole in her book Anonymous: Jesus’ Hidden Years and Yours:

When tempted in the layer of appetite, Jesus did not deny the existence of his natural longings and feelings. He did, however, intentionally upgrade the authority of his will by empowering it with God’s Word.
Feelings were designed to follow, not lead. So when God’s will and Word take the driver’s seat in our lives, our feelings and desires are free to follow cleanly without regrets in safe boundaries.

Alicia Britt Chole

Perhaps stillness tempers feelings in ways that busyness does not. Maybe my relentless striving actually erodes away at opportunities to be approachable and present in my relationships. To actively listen. To allow my soul to rest. And it’s realizations at times like these that I’m extra grateful Jesus shows us how to do life with people. How to replace busyness with steadfastness.

Take care & take heart,