As a young adult I realized that I was being called to live a committed single life rather than being called to married life. My faith was strong. I believe that was the result of receiving the gift of faith after asking for that gift at a Life in the Spirit seminar shortly after high school. However, lacking strong family bonds, I came to focus on my non-blood relative(s) friendships as the ties that bind. I made sure that my friends knew that I was always available for them, day or night, if they wanted to talk or needed me in another capacity. I also threw myself into church activities. My first semester at college, I attended Mass at the Newman Center, and continued to feel strong in faith. After that first semester, my grades were not the high marks that I was used to getting. So I decided to attend daily Mass, hoping that would score me some brownie points with God. Well, my GPA dropped even lower after that semester. Daily Mass got sacrificed.
After graduating from college I entered the workforce, still living the committed single life and putting others first. That left me precious little time, however, to get to know myself. After decades of putting others first and largely ignoring myself, I have been brought to realize that all of the busyness of serving God by serving others left me high and dry as far as knowing who I am and what is my purpose.
Recently my second job, which from its start was temporary, came to an end. While looking for a replacement for that income I am viewing this situation as God’s gift of time to me. And in this gift of time phase, the Holy Spirit is guiding me to focus on getting to know myself, to love myself, and to allow myself to be loved by God. Part of this includes incorporating the concept of self-care, which has been mostly foreign in my life up until now. When I was younger I loved to read. Somehow I allowed this simple pleasure to get left by the wayside. I think that the advent of technology (and learning to grapple with said technology) had something to do with it. Of course I continued to read Holy Scripture. Now I am taking baby steps to supplement and balance that with other reading material once more.
A couple of months ago I was invited to co-share at the monthly prayer retreat here at PWC. I felt honored and a little bit apprehensive at the same time. Public speaking is way out of my comfort zone. This is an opportunity to change and grow, I told myself. The theme of that session was “Be Still” from Psalms 46:10 …Be still and know that I am God… *
It was a blessing in disguise to be free of the second job so that I had time to prepare for that session. In my practice of being still (reading is just one of the ways that I do that) I have been led to realize that I truly am a child of God, and as such, worthy of love. My job now is to allow that love to permeate by being and to share that love. From extreme busyness to being still, I feel buoyant that I’m being pointed in the right direction. And there is more work to do.
*Life Application Study Bible