I am so excited and honored that Amelia Rhodes asked me to guest post on her blog this week (go visit!!). She recently published the book, Pray A to Z: A Practical Guide to Pray for Your Community. It is all about prayer and praying for others. Sometimes, the needs of the world around us can seem overwhelming, so I love that this book showcases a very practical way to intercede for others.
However, her readers told her they were unsure of how to pray for things they had never experienced. One of those things was the devastating effects of suicide. Since I’ve shared publicly about my journey through grieving my brother who took his life in July 2015, she reached out to ask me to share my story. I was more than willing to do that.
The thing is, though, I had planned to kind of re-haul this blog. I wanted to make it easier for you to find things other than the most recent posts. I’ve been offering the same little printable to readers who sign up on my email list, but I really wanted to offer something of more substance that my readers might find more useful. I had planned on working on those things in the month of January, but then sickness hit our house.
Once we were all mostly back on our feet, suddenly it was the end of the quarter at school. I not only had to get things wrapped up for one quarter, but I had to prep the following quarter, too. I also had a fairly large newsletter due, and I had an article that was due.
All these things needed to be done in about a week’s time, and I was feeling all kinds of frustrated and overwhelmed.
And behind – always behind!
The other morning, it just all seemed like too much. I was in my prayer time, and I just started crying, telling God I just couldn’t do ALL. THE. THINGS. I asked God if he REALLY wanted me to be more purposeful and intentional with this blog while also writing children’s books and teaching middle schoolers English and keeping up my household and nurturing my relationships because it just seemed like too much. Impossible.
As I prayed about this (okay, whined a bit too, if I’m honest), my eyes fell on my open Bible. I’ve been reading Chip Ingram’s book, The Real God and meditating on the Scriptures in each chapter. So, I had my Bible open to Galatians 5:16, 17, and I had been reading about the flesh and the spirit – totally different topic.
As I waited for God to respond to my pleas, my eyes were drawn across the page to Galatians 6:9, and I started crying all over again.
God reminded me that all He was asking me to do was to be faithful – to faithfully use the time I had set aside for my writing and let Him worry about the results.
He reminded me of my word for this year – CONTEND.
The thing is by nature, I’m not much of a fighter. It’s easier to give up when things get a overwhelming and difficult. That’s what I wanted to do this morning – to let it go. To make excuses and justify giving up because it wasn’t like I didn’t have a job and a home and family to take care of. It all seemed TOO HARD, and kind of impossible.
But God doesn’t call us to do the impossible in one big swoop. He calls us to being faithful in the small, daily steps of obedience. Those small steps eventually add up to a much bigger whole than we can imagine when we are in the trenches of the everyday.
Sometimes, it’s so easy to forget that my job is just to do the work.
Have you been feeling overwhelmed lately? What small step can you take today to continue on the path God has called you to? I’d love to hear about it!
1 Comment on When You Want to Quit
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Thanks, Rosanne! A great reminder to trust Him with the results. And good for you re the guest post. I’m sure it’ll be helpful to readers.