I wish I had blogged end of last week as it would have been so much more encouraging and uplifting and inspiring....I had been to Willow Creek conference for second time...(did I tell you I had actually been to Chicago to attend it live at Willow Creek Church itself?? LOL.....) and found the talks once more challenging and refreshing and planned to blog about my REPLENISHMENT STRATEGY...courtesy of Bill Hybels Talk.
He spoke about how we all need to be very careful to ensure we replenish our lives with the good things we need..eg...
Gods word..prayer...worhsip..leisure..family...good diet..exercise..etc That we run the danger of working and serving and not taking care of our mind body soul and spirit. I realised that over the summer months I had allowed myself to get "empty" and the plan was to blog about what I planned to do about it !!
Well..the best plans get waylaid by life sometimes and I am so far from being replenished that I may not ever get it right. After serving both Friday and Saturday day at Willow Creek....on the Sunday I found myself ...due to unforeseen circumstances ....having to serve yet again both am and pm meetings and in between I still managed to drive to London for 10am and attend a friends daughters pre wedding
get- together and then drive back again for 1.45 to have my entire family for the afternoon...but I did make sure we all went out for lunch ...9 of us to The Old Manor.!!Then got very cross with the evening serving teams that they hadn't turned up or done what they were supposed to do....and felt really bad for being such a moaner...and then Simon preached...well...thats the story of why this blog is just "mutter mutter mutter"
I was completely undone by what he talked about and spent the best part of half hour just weeping at the end....then wept all over Cat...then on Tuesday..wept all over Penny...then today wept all over Iris....So..you may ask..what did he preach...
He talked about the "mystery" of God and how good things can happen to us even when we are in the centre of Gods plan...and that sometimes there are circumstances in our lives that we have no answers for and our prayers seem to go unanswered....and I began to think about Cat and Nick and why they are having such difficulty having a baby and why others can have 2..3..and more children without any problems and I just feel completely undone by it all.I realise that because I have allowed myself to empty out I have no reserves of faith or emotional strength to fall back on and I guess that's why I am feeling so weepy....."mutter mutter mutter.!"
Add on to all that the stress of our IVA and the financial implications of our annual review...which we had back today and for some reason they now want an "extra" 70.00 each month... "mutter mutter mutter.!"
To ensure I don't get any chance to actually replenish at all...we have a wedding to go to in two weeks time and I cant find anything to wear....with all the weight I have put on this last 18mth I have tried on the entire contents of my wardrobe plus all the boxes in the loft and scoured every shop in Berkshire ...all to no avail. I have even put an appeal on Face Book..."mutter mutter mutter.!"
This coming weekend was supposed to be our weekend off...no children..no commitments...no serving....and I was so looking forward to just chilling out with hubby doing nothing....and what do I find...its the Musical Fireworks Championships of the UK..( THE WHAT?? I HEAR YOU ASKING..).. Chris has worked for a Fireworks company for almost 20 years now and they compete annually for the UK display teams cup and believe it or not they were 2nd last year..but this particular one is actually the first time they have competed in the musical competition ..the displays are all set to music...so off he will go mid afternoon Saturday and he wont be back till mid afternoon Monday so bang goes our chill out weekend and I will now actually be almost totally on my own..but listen up folks..what do I get..oh yes a call to say the leader of my Sunday car parking team cant be there...so guess where I will be at 8am Sunday morning...(you may detect a slight hint of sarcasm there).."mutter mutter mutter"
You see...this is what happens when you get empty....it all falls to pieces..I haven't even begun to blog about writing commitments for the church magazine...or my writing assignment for Exposition....my commitments to car parking / admin...and CAP and Inspire and not to mention my actual working life ."mutter mutter mutter!"
Perhaps over weekend I will plan my "replenishment strategy" and blog about it Monday. I wonder how you guys are with your full/empty ratio...is it only me that has allowed myself to empty out over the summer??The really tragic thing is that I know this can happen and over the years I try so hard NOT to let it get this bad but somehow or other I seem to have been sideswept this time round "mutter mutter mutter.!"
2 comments:
Maybe thats the problem keeping busy all the time.. Is it that we think if we are not busy then we have time to think. [Blimey that may be worse]
When really we have taken on more than we can cope with. Going out with family and friends would be nice, if only we were'nt thinking of all the other stuff that we need to get through that day.
Today was a break through for me i had a nice early finish. I did not have to run kids to any clubs and it was actually nice.
Hi Irene. I haven't responded to one of your blogs before but I had to check it out, having read your snippets on fb. You are soooo right! I think we can handle the busyness of life and what is thrown at us if all our reserves are stocked up but when they are depleted we fall apart. As we never know when this is going to happen, staying replenished is so important and something we should all consider. Thank you for being sooo incredibly honest about how things get you down at times and even someone who seems to love car parking has had enough sometimes! Best foot forward...lol Suzanne (Whitton) xx
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