“You have a lot on your plate.” It’s a statement I hear often, and I know it’s true. I homeschool, I cook nearly everything from scratch to accommodate our food sensitivities, I’m a pastor’s wife with various responsibilities and projects, not to mention I work at home now as a writer. It’s a full plate. It’s easy to feel like I’m pulled in a thousand directions, to feel overwhelmed by the tension. There are days when that full plate seems too heavy.
Perhaps that’s why the book Rhythms of Grace resonated with me. The author Kerri Weems discussed the tensions we often feel from too much to do. Her comment was that we feel tension when those tasks have opposing priorities. But, if there is a way to have every task share the same priority, our pace of life would change. That’s what her book is about: changing your pace, setting your life’s rhythm, “discovering God’s tempo for your life.”
It’s easy to let our “to-dos” set our life’s rhythm. But my life purpose is not to check off all the boxes for the day (though it gives me great joy to do so). My purpose is to seek God and know Him more. And the delight is that I can accomplish that in so many varied ways—cleaning my house, making meals, serving my family and church family, teaching a class or Bible study, writing a story, or ministering in an assisted living facility.
To see my to-dos and projects as either achieving the same goal or at odds with each other was new—and liberating. The idea brought so much clarity.
Were each of my tasks serving a purpose of their own? Were all of these activities part of separate agendas? Or was I seeing each task, each project, as just one more way to seek Him? These questions help me to cut what doesn’t belong and embrace what does. Most importantly, these questions help me to remember why I do what I do.
I’m not pulled in a thousand different directions. Instead I have a thousand threads weaving my life into His. With each task, I have the grace and opportunity to know Him more. Yes, I have a full plate, but that full plate can be a feast of His goodness and grace in my life.
