Invested

I feel like the #1 sentence I type out over and over again is how crazy town our life is.  And it just is.  As is everyone else’s.  A vicious, yet lovely cycle.  Today was full of just random things being accomplished.  I didn’t even get to touch work because my other list was so dang long.  I’m constantly working on trying to keep a balance and some days work just doesn’t happen despite a well thought out plan.  Tomorrow is Hudson’s birthday.  He requested black, red and blue Star Wars pancakes.  Yeah, so maybe I have encouraged their creativity a bit too much.  Maybe I’ve offered them the world on their birthdays.  Josh Kelley is currently brainstorming his birthday door.

All day I’ve been thinking about our commitments and the things we say “yes” to.  Why do we choose what we choose?  What gets a yes and what gets a no?  I’d never ever thought about how we can invest in actual people until almost 4 years ago when Mom died.  I remember sitting at her house after a long visitation, her funeral being the very next day, with my cousin Rebecca, Aunt Janie, Aunt Linda and Uncle Tom.  I’m sure there were other people there too, but my mind flakes during that whole time period.  The next day I would be speaking at my mother’s funeral and I had nothing.  Not a thing.  I curled up on her couch with college ruled paper and a pen and set to writing.  And during this time I wrote about her and one thought which had never occurred to me was how she invested in people.  She devoted love, time, energy, effort, money, etc to the people around her and all to make them feel known, special, loved, encouraged, set apart…for them to see the love of Christ through her.  Since this moment I have thought about relationships differently.  I want to be a people investor.  I want to make people feel seen and known, special and loved.

I am such a doer…I hate to tell someone no…I hate to admit “I cannot do this right now”…it makes me feel inadequate…it makes me feel like a failure.  I know this all comes from pride and a twinge of OCDness and I know this really doesn’t make me a failure at all, but God has been working on me.  Bringing to light in my heart the fact I need to see my current life for what it is.  I am not super human.  I cannot physically do everything people ask of me or all the things I put on myself…the things I think “I love Jesus, so I should do this too.  And that.  And that.  Oh, and that.”  It’s too much sometimes and I had gotten to a point where I was trying to do so many things I wasn’t doing any of them well.  So I started saying no and I started telling myself no and I started trying to do the yes things really well.  I had given myself a guilt trip over and over again about not attending a certain ministry and then one day I just came to the conclusion “This is not physically possible to do anymore.  I need to say no right now.  Maybe not forever, but for this season I cannot do it.”  I remember last year when the kids started their new school and I was so excited about helping in their classrooms.  This was so important to me and then January rolled around and our littlest joined the family and I wasn’t able to help in their classrooms anymore.  I physically could not do it…I now had an 8-month-old with me 24/7, 7 days a week.  It may sound silly, but I felt so guilty to now tell their teachers I couldn’t help in their classrooms anymore.  It was really hard for me and my pride.  But it was a season.  Now she is in MDO 2 days a week with Amon I’m at their school every Monday morning.  A new season.  A new “yes”.

I reached a point of being tired of over doing and giving myself huge guilt trips.  I thought the more the better…more proved how spiritual I was…more proved I loved Jesus a lot.  Do.  Do. Do.  But I know for myself I had this so wrong.  I was doing a lot, but wasn’t really investing in anyone or anything.  And actually investing fully in fewer things…doing those things really well instead of half way…proved to be the best decision for me…admitting to myself I couldn’t do it all and that was simply okay.

I want to do this vapor right.  I want to live a life which makes God so proud.  Almost every day I look at our life and think and then re-think all the yeses…all the commitments…all the things which we pour our time and energy and love and resources into.  Are they the right things?  Do they have worth & value?  Are they things which invest in people and our community?  Are they kingdom worthy?  These questions run through my head a 1000 times over.  Some days I send myself into full on anxiety and worry over if we are doing this one life right.  Are we being fully who God created us to be?  And then God sends me a glaring and beautiful reminder in His word:

2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 The Message

“Because we know that this extraordinary day is just ahead, we pray for you all the time—pray that our God will make you fit for what he’s called you to be, pray that he’ll fill your good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something. If your life honors the name of Jesus, he will honor you. Grace is behind and through all of this, our God giving himself freely, the Master, Jesus Christ, giving himself freely.”

Yes, yes, triple yes.  God, make me worthy of the calling for your glory!