Learning to ‘sit down.’

Today’s ‘Girlfriends in God’ passage was particularly powerful for me. I continually struggle with balancing do-it-all-let’s-go-go-go, with taking a step back and realizing that sometimes less is most definitely more.

In  my commitments. To family, friends, and last but not least, myself.

In my fitness. Sticking closer to the ‘work smarter, not harder’ mantra.

In my eating. Continuing on the log as a tool, not as a hard and fast rule. In ‘setting it and forgetting it’ (rather than letting it consume my thoughts)

In my faith. In strengthening my relationship with God. In faith in myself. In faith in my life path.

When you cram all of that together, all of those goals, all of those…things, it takes up a lot of space in my brain, in my habits, in my day.

When do I ‘sit down?’

When do I let the process happen.

Rather than poke and prod it to death?

THIS:

We all struggle with balance and the inevitable battle with stress that struggle creates. When we refuse to balance the sometimes overwhelming demands of work, home, family, friends, and personal growth, stress will be the natural result. What we really need is a holy balance only God can bring. The story of Mary and Martha, two very different women, offers valuable truths about balance that we can apply to our lives today.

A balanced life is focused on right things. <-hello epiphany!! 

AND THIS:

Choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus requires decisive planning, purposeful scheduling and a willful determination. Every day, God wants relationship building time with us, which means that time at His feet, in His presence must be our highest priority…It is amazing to me how I can squander away the best part of my day, leaving God with the leftover scraps of time and then have the audacity to complain that my life is void of power and purpose. Distractions come from every side. Some of those distractions are good and wonderful things, but they are all still wrong things if they keep us from stopping to spend time with God. We make daily choices about where we invest our time as we run errands, plan meals, deal with children, clean house, and do laundry – but fail to schedule the most important activity of all, spending time with God.

Investing my time. My time is an investment. Just as is all of our time. It is valuable and it deserve to be made a priority. Not squandered away. Not OVER-planned down to a point of stress and losing sight of that importance. (This Lindsay also makes some great points on prioritizing and simplifying – I am constantly learning from you, girl!!)

I’ve been letting my ‘smarter, not harder’ mantra get the best of me…because I’ve been reversing it. Harder, NOT smarter. For example, when I read Lindsay’s post ‘dear overexercising’ – wow, that hit home. While I think for the most part I strike a good balance with my workouts and my teaching, the lines are blurring a little. I put too much pressure on myself to cram it all in. And instead of smarter, it’s just harder. And it’s not productive.

The same goes with the other areas in my life I mentioned above. I need to prioritize. Not try to do it all because I know I can, or because I am *that* productive. Honoring the investment. Honoring the time. And instead making quality investments with my time. Back to balancing too little with too much and hitting the balance of ‘just right’ in all aspects of my life.

I’m learning to sit down. (Again) going back to basics. And I already feel more balanced and ‘free’ just thinking about it. Take a step back, look at your time ‘investments’ and when you think of them that way, they mean so much more, don’t they?