There is an endless stream of demands on my time.  The obvious things of course….taking care of my family, my career, maintaining the household.  Those things are consuming enough.

So lets add to that, shall we?

A healthy dose of activities for my daughters, both extra curricular activities as well as my teen’s budding social life.  Sometimes it feels like I spend an inordinate amount of time in the car, dropping someone off, picking someone up.  Facilitating wardrobe changes and instrument pick-ups and re-dropping off for the next activity.

Then there is the ever popular volunteering at school.  I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t always love the volunteering but I almost always feel obligated to do it for some reason.  Good moms volunteer and good Jesus girls volunteer with a smile on their faces.

Even though what they want most is a nap.

My to-list is massively oversimplified here but let’s conclude with all the things we do at church.  It never feels like it’s okay to say no to things at church either, does it?  It’s God’s work.  Reaching the lost.  So that means I need to sign up to man tables and bake cookies and usher at the events my choir doesn’t sing at but direct the choir at the events they DO sing at and make shepherd costumes and lead worship and volunteer to hold babies in the nursery and attend meetings and serve on committees and….

And…and….and.

Who said a good Jesus girl does everything and does it all well?  Who was it that essentially lined up being an over-committed yes girl with being a good Christian?

But that’s how it feels, doesn’t it?

In her book “The Best Yes”, Lysa TerKuerst makes this (very important) point:

“Saying yes all the time won’t make me a Wonder Woman. It will make me a worn-out woman.”

True.  All true.

Doing too much, spreading yourself too thin, even for Jesus, is still doing too much.  And please tell me I’m not the only one who has found out the hard way that too much doesn’t work.

You can’t do everything and do it all well.  Oh, the world makes you feel that if you’re not doing it all and doing it perfectly you’ve failed.  But no.  Sweet sister, that’s a lie straight from the enemy’s mouth, designed to keep you living in lack, either on a perpetual treadmill of over-activity or not even trying since you feel like you can’t measure up.

There are a million good things we could do.  But we each can’t do a million things.  So choose wisely and give yourself permission to rest.  Be kind to yourself.  Go to bed on time.  Recognize when enough is enough.  Nourish your soul.  And trust that He who created you never intended for you to be so busy, you don’t even have time to give Him a shout out throughout the day.

Take time to smell the roses.  Or look at the butterflies.  But please.  Make sure you take the time you need to nourish your soul.

It’s that important.

This post is written in conjunction with the #Write31days Challenge and linked up with Kate Motaung’s Five Minute Friday crew here and Nester Smith’s friends here.