Category Archives: Observations

Things I see that I want to remember.

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Expectations

My husband is amazing. He has always had the type of maturity (I seem to lack) that sees something needing to be done, and does it. But especially lately, as I’ve been getting more and more run-down by this third pregnancy, he’s been stepping up to the plate and batting for both of us.

I am so thankful for him. And proud of him too.
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How busy do we have to be as Christians?

Currently Reading
The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits
By Richard A. Swenson, Richard A. Swenson M.D.
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I found a good reminder today in a book called The Overload Syndrome. It’s a book that asks readers first to recognize they have limits then encourages them to live inside those limits, despite all they could be doing, in order to remain healthy and (even) best available to God.

“God does not have to depend on human exhaustion to get His work done. God is not so desperate for resources to accomplish His purposes that we have to abandon the raising of our children in order to accommodate Him. God is not so despairing of where to turn next that He has to ask us to go without sleep for five nights in a row. Chronic overloading is not a prerequisite for authentic Christianity. Quite the contrary, overloading is often what we do when we forget who God is.

“Someone has said, ‘God can do in twenty minutes what it takes us twenty years to do.’ Let’s trust more and do less. Is it busyness that moves mountains…or faith?” (pp. 36, 72).

I have a remarkably empty calendar right now. Perhaps the emptiest it’s been since I could set my own schedule: all I have in stone is church/Sunday school on Sunday and ToastMasters for an hour on Mondays.

And I have rarely felt this tired. Granted, that has everything to do with being pregnant, sick, and corralling a house with 2 toddlers.

But, the best thing about being tired (and I like this) is that it makes me ruthlessly evaluate every new (or old) opportunity that comes my way.

It makes me look at what need is being met in this activity– either by me or for me– and if it’s not important (enough), it is very easy to let it go. This awareness also makes it relatively easy to occasionally pick-up new things w/o feeling guilty. The cost/benefits ratio is the easiest to see it’s been in years.

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Marriage is hard work?

In the world I come from (where marriage is forever and you’re supposed to go in with your eyes wide open), I think sometimes the message that “Marriage is hard-work” is a little over-emphasized.

Today I was listening to a wife who came to my MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) meeting to talk about marriage, and sticking it out. I appreciated how she emphasized there are seasons in a marriage, and even cycles within the seasons: how the happiness/enjoyment may come and go, but it always comes again. Continue reading →

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Pregnancy Brain?

I have two friends who recently gave birth to their third child (each of them). We have many ideas in common, but one we do not share is the idea of a specific malady they generally refer to as “pregnancy brain.”

The symptoms of this affliction include clumsiness, scattered thoughts, and forgetful or foolish behavior. One husband swears they knew his wife was pregnant this latest time because she began dropping things. Their 5-year-old recently questioned whether his sister (2) was pregnant when she began dropping things ( I assume more than usual). Continue reading →

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Muscle-memory

Do we consider (I wonder) the way we’re training our mind/will/emotions in our daily responses to things?

Earlier this week an (older) friend was describing to me how her mother’s dementia was worsening. This friend described how hard it was getting to shift her mother’s focus off the negative (real and imagined) of her own world. Continue reading →