Challenged

I am challenged in so many areas right now.  The part of me that feels like I've never done enough always haunts me.  I never know if the Spirit of God is prompting me into action or if the perfectionist in me is trying desperately to feel 'good'.  The result is often a poor momma giving it up and choosing inaction...which benfits none.  How I long to be one of those free-wheeling people that just handle things as they come along, not fretting and worrying-just doing.  Instead, the wheels in my brain are always on hyperdrive.  I am always processing the things I should be doing and at the same time missing opportunities left and right.  I am training myself to be different...I am just in a 'cycle' right now of overthinking and making mountains out of molehills.

Latest challenges:

• I am not very loving to either of my parents.  Sure I do for my mom all the time.  Sometime as many as 3 appts. in a week, but usually just one.  I dread it and then cannot wait to get away after the fact.  This is so unGodly.  I have to pray my way through the whole visit to be nice.  I want to be loving and enjoy my time with her.  In my defense, my mother is...challenging.  She is VERY critical of me and seems to take every opportunity to point out anything she doesn't like about me.  It can be as simple as Erik's haircut or as emotional as "You don't visit enough."  I love my momma.  I want to treasure our relationship and enjoy our time together.  My dad is going through an emotional time right now.  He had an old girlfriend come back into his life, turn that life upside down and now is slowly breaking up with him.  The best I can do is pray and I have been.  I just don't want to be involved.  These two relationships make me feel cold and selfish and yet I KNOW that being around my family of origin( How do you like that psychology term?) is detrimental to my own family and me.  Please God, heal me through my relationships with my own children.  Please God, allow me to break the chain of dysfunction...or at least loosen it.
• My job is frustrating me right now.  We are in the middle of a big change up that will mean more hours which is awesome.  It will also mean more training which means working with someone else which means juggling my schedule more.  It isn't as though I am crazy busy all the time...but I am already scheduling around 7-8 different people's schedules and it is just tiring.  The good news is that my job is fairly simple, extremely flexible and Yeah!, about to earn me more hours.  It will only be crazy for a week or so.  (The same week my mom has three doctor appointments.)
• Somehow, in the midst of those challenges...I feel compelled to be making a huge difference in the world.  We had a speaker at church last night who was talking about reaching out to schools in their community.  They went to a school and asked for their worst problem children and started a program to help them as an entire church project.  I am blown away and fired up.  Man I want that!  To make a difference in the lives of others.  I want to help someone who doesn't have any hope.  I want to let some kid with nothing but problems know that there is hope in the world.  I want to have a role in a ministry that makes a difference.

So, today as I plan a Girl Scout Easter party(to give the leader a tiny break), reflect on how to help one of the girls' friends who can't seem to 'get' math, make plans for the weekend to show love to my family, get all upcoming 'stuff' on my calendar, await a phone call to possibly help a friend with childcare arrangements, try to get curriculum sorted through and sold, and maybe a load of laudry or two...I wonder exactly how I can fit in an amazing ministry while pondering if maybe I am, in fact, already right smack in the middle of one.  One appropriately labeled, LIFE.