Perspective

For those of you who read this blog through a blogfeeder, or happened to chance onto my blog at just the right time yesterday afternoon, you might have caught an ugly post that I spewed. I was having a tough day yesterday. There were a multitude of reasons. Mostly I had just lost my perspective and was having trouble getting it back. I don't want this post to become a total re-hash of the one I deleted yesterday, so I won't go into any of the details of it.

I am very honest on this blog. I don't believe in sugar-coating my life or my struggles as a mother because I believe that is destructive. To pretend my life is perfect and that I don't struggle will only make other people feel like failures for not being perfect themselves. None of us are perfect, none of us have it all together and none of us has is all figured out. I don't want anyone reading my blog to get the impression that I think that I do. I know I don't. Yet yesterday's post was doing nothing but indulging my self-pity and glorifying it, so I felt it needed to be deleted. Not because I'm afraid of telling all of you that I have rough days (too late), but because there was something about that particular post that I felt the Lord was telling me to delete. So I did.

The purpose of this post, though, is to tell you what finally turned my day around yesterday. Despite the fact that I had spent the majority of the day feeling sorry for myself and overwhelmed by motherhood, I had a Bible study to lead last night. I spent my boys' naptime finishing up my homework and preparing the questions. I then took the time to pray for each of the women in my study by name, for their individual requests (as an aside...this is how I handle praying. On the day I lead Bible study, I take the time to pray for each of the women in my study, on the day I plan my Sunday school lesson, I take the time to pray for each of the Jr. High girls I teach individually. Otherwise I could get overwhelmed trying to pray for everyone every day). One by one, all of my worries dwindled to nothing as I prayed for women whose brother's have brain cancer and women whose husbands are not believers, among other things. All of a sudden I had perspective. The missing piece to my day. The thing that was keeping my attitude in the dumps. I had not been able to let the Holy Spirit minister to my heart because I was so bogged down in pity. Praying for others made me realize how little I had to complain about.

I have mentioned on this blog several times how important it is to pray for the little and the big. How important it is to not carry any burden on your own, but to rely on the strength of our Lord. I don't want to diminish the daily struggles we face. God cares about those, too. He wants to hear about them. But sometimes the best way for Him to help us carry our burdens is to remind us of how light they really are compared to the burdens of others. He did that exact thing for me yesterday. And I am grateful.