Lately I have been learning deep lessons on faith and trust. I started a new job that has been super demanding and stressful for me. I am so happy to have it and am so grateful for it and know in the long run it will be great. But … right now it has been crazy busy and overwhelming. I feel like I will never have enough time to do all that I need to do in the way that it needs to be done, if that makes any sense. I get overwhelmed and feel like I need to use all and any time I have in pursuit of the demands of my job.
This is where my trial of faith comes into play. My patriarchal blessing promises that if I put God’s kingdom and my children first, then everything else will fall into place, especially work.
I try to remind myself of this as I face the temptations to stay longer at work to get more done when I know my kids are home waiting for me. I remind myself of that promise when it is Sunday and I find myself with a little down time and thoughts from work creeping in and I face the temptation to open my emails. Just answering a couple wouldn’t hurt, right?
I have found (yes, the hard way) that answering just a couple does hurt, that a couple turn into more and those turn into tracking items and info down and all of the sudden I have spent hours of my Sunday working. I don’t like this. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some work on Sunday’s, like yard work. Yard work makes me happy, and I don’t get to do it everyday, so for me, yard work is a delightful Sunday activity.
Putting the Lord and His Kingdom first means keeping the Sabbath day holy. It means sacrificing. It means keeping enough focus to keep my heart right, to have perspective, to love as He does. It means keeping Him in my heart at all times.
In this case, stress comes from Satan. He wants me to believe that I have to control it. He wants me to think that if I don’t, it will all fall apart. He wants me to have anxiety that causes me to shut down and to have less happiness, to be distracted.
I have to remember the promises made to me and simply trust and have faith. I believe that God cannot and will not break the promises He makes. So I will discipline myself to hold to my boundaries. I will trust in the promise the Lord has given me and set it all down and simply walk away from work when I know my family and the Lord need my time. I will trust. I will have faith. It isn’t and won’t be easy, and is scary at times, but I can’t think of a single time in the past that I wasn’t blessed for it. I need His blessings in my life.
Forever grateful for His wisdom and vision and love! He makes me smile.
