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Introspective Sojourner

The journey inward following Christ’s path to that person I was uniquely created to be.

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If I’d Asked For Help

I broke something that meant a lot to me today because I wouldn’t ask for help. Just a little two tiered serving dish. I could probably replace it inexpensively – except to me it’s so much more than a serving tray.

I was washing it and had not taken it apart when it was dry. I laid it on the counter, but I was afraid it would roll off accidentally. I tried to unscrew the pieces but it was wet and it just kept spinning. My husband was busy shoveling snow and even though at that exact moment he came into the kitchen, I didn’t want to bother him and so I didn’t ask for help. I knew I needed help and that it would have taken him a second and he wouldn’t have minded at all. But I didn’t want to bother him. There’s been a lot of snow here in Ohio lately and he’s worked very hard to keep things safe and snow free. And so my tray slipped and fell just an inch or two. But it chipped.

You may be thinking, it’s just a plate. But this little plate was given to me after Gramma Brown passed away. I was included in a family that is not technically my family to choose something to remind me of her. You see my own family does not include me, but my best friend’s family has always treated me like family. When I go home to visit, they are the first place I stop. My bestie has four adopted children legally but I’m really they’re first adopted kid. I was chosen, always included and always loved. They have been a lifeboat in the storms of my life. They are truly a gift from God to remind me that He also chose me. That I am adopted into His family as well. I know exactly what it feels like to be truly treated as family and wholly loved.

But this blog is about something more. I knew I needed to ask for help. I should have asked for help. Jerry would not have minded.

I was a single parent for several years and I needed help often. My nature is to do it myself and not ask for help, but single parenting is really hard. A Pastor of mine who was also a friend told me once that I needed to accept help, receive help or I was taking away someone else’s blessing. It’s a blessing to give. Most people are happy to help others in need, they just don’t exactly know how to help. I think that’s because most people are like me and they think they need to do it alone and they resist asking for help. They don’t even bother to ask. I’ve had several people come back later when I was thanking them for their help and let me know that they were happy to have been able to help. Thank you for that advice, Stephen Sloat.

Except I didn’t follow that advice this morning, and now my serving plate is chipped.

Christmas is a hectic time. You may find you need to ask for help. Maybe you just need a friend to vent to or maybe you need someone to shovel the mountain of snow Ohio left at your doorstep. I know it’s against our nature and that those who take and take and take have ruined the gift of giving for many of us. We don’t want to be a bother. We don’t want to impose. Our striving for self sufficiency hasn’t left any room for receiving that gift of assistance.

Life wasn’t meant to be lived alone. People actually do want to help. They probably would help and move on without it ever crossing their mind again. But life is so much richer and fuller and more connected when we live it together. When we reach out in need and when we see a need and reach out to help. That connection to others makes us feel whole.

God asks us to love like He loves us. Well, he has adopted us into His family. If we receive His gift in faith, we are His sons and daughters. We are part of the family. We are loved and whole together. Part of the greatest family of all time, actually. As your sibling, I’m telling you we’re happy to help. We are only an ask away. Don’t struggle. Don’t burn yourself out thinking you have to do it alone. God put us in your life for a reason. Don’t take away our blessing of helping you and loving you the way that God loves us. Everyone needs help once and a while. Leave room to receive it. Be open to the idea that God may have already sent your husband into the kitchen at the exact moment you needed him.

Don’t let your serving dish get chipped this Christmas. Reach out. We’re here.

By Vicki L. Pugliese

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Fake Connections

I didn’t make it to church today. I had an excuse – there are always excuses. It was very cold, and our dog isn’t allowed unsupervised in the house because she eats doors. I hate leaving her in the dog run, even though we heat it some and it’s covered and has access to the yard. It was just an excuse. I’m struggling with having excuses come Sunday morning. We watch the service from home. The sermon was great. Our pastor does an excellent job.

It’s become a pattern in my life. Excuses to keep me from making real connections with people I love. It’s easy to find excuses… I’m not feeling up to it. I’m tired. I’m working or taking care of this thing I need to do. All of my connections, not just attending church; going to visit my friends, even family, going to Bible study, even just going to the store. My circle is closing in on me.

When I was younger, I loved going to hang out with friends and hated being alone. If I was stuck being alone, I was on the phone grasping at the connections I desperately wanted. Now, if you call me without texting first, I will probably screen your call and call you back – reluctantly. I will guilt myself until I do call you back, so I’m not really sure why I hate picking up. I don’t actually mind talking on the phone, especially if there is distance between us and visiting is impossible or difficult. Still there will be at least a moment or two of panic and dread as I answer the call.

This morning, I saw one of my favorite families walk down the aisle to the front of the church and I was sad I had chosen to stay home. I realized how I’ve given up true connections for false connections. I avoid going out to hang out with friends and families. I settle for a phone call. Actually, I prefer a text. I have fake connections with friends from my childhood and youth. People I don’t really know but we enjoy the same silly memes and jokes. Instead of going out and doing things, learning new things or just enjoying crowds who like the same things that I do, I doom scroll through social media or binge watch TV.

Fake connections have been invading my life since childhood. First the phone and TV, followed by the internet and now social media. Slowly electronic connections, which give me a false sense of connection, have eroded my desire for real connections. Maybe not my desire but certainly my follow-through. They pacify my hunger like cheap sweet or salty snacks. That’s a blog for another time. They don’t really feed the nutritional need for connection. They just keep me from being hungry.

Yesterday we had a big group of family and friends get together to celebrate some birthdays. The connections were true, and it filled my soul. I got to spend some quality time laughing and enjoying my kids and grandkids.

As kids we were always surrounded by family and friends. Someone was always dropping by, or we were going to visit. Being Generation Jones, we left early in the morning and showed back up when it got dark. We spent every moment with friends. If we ended up at someone’s house, there was often a group of adults hanging out as well, somewhere near-by. We might try to stick around and just watch tv Saturday mornings but one or two cartoons in, our parents were kicking us out to go play. I never played alone. If my bestie was unavailable, I’d find another kid, or we’d end up at the park or pool and spend the afternoon with a friend or two amongst a crowd of a friend or two.

Today, I work from home. I connect via the internet with coworkers that don’t even live in the same state as me or each other. I text my kids and best friend. I send memes and videos to people while scrolling on social media. I binge watch fake connections on tv that resolve problems in an hour. My circle becomes smaller and smaller as the enemy makes it easier and easier to isolate myself and find excuses not to make the effort to have a real connection. Even my devotions are via my smart phone instead of picking up the Bible right beside me. Real connections feed me, but I settle for the fake ones because of excuses. I can find a million of them. Ironically, I worry about some of the people I love who are very introverted, who don’t like things that are too peopley. Maybe I should be worrying about me. I definitely get more out of church when I attend, so I’m not exactly sure why I find excuses. Unless it’s the enemy. If the enemy can’t take away my faith, it can hobble the connections and my impact with excuses. Pretty clever plan actually.

Just like the sweet or salty snack, I will make the wrong choice knowing it’s the wrong choice at times. But perhaps I can move towards correcting this if I acknowledge it’s an issue and I want to change it. 

Next week, I’ll see that church family in person. At least I hope I will, because I miss their faces and the sound of their voices. Next week I’ll feed my soul the nutrition it really needs, a real connection. If you attend church with me and I’m not there next week, feel free to tag this post and remind me. Because my soul needs it. God built us for connections, real connections, and I need to stop finding excuses for fake ones.

By Vicki L. Pugliese.  

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The Pruning of Me

Pruning my roses is cathartic for me. I love searching out the right spot to trim back to. I know that trimming the bushes will allow them to bloom again; fuller and stronger. I see the deep color of the new leaves. I see the thicker, heartier stems pushing through and hints of blooms to come. 

There are parallels to my life and faith. I’m not always happy when God prunes – especially when the decay goes deep. Things I’ve struggled with for a long time that I know need to be cleared away for me to grow. They are familiar and I get anxious when He says they have to go. 

I look at my childhood and see the blooms I once had. I miss them. 

“Remember when I prayed all the time and ran around singing hymns, God?” 

He tells me that He loved those blooms too, but to trust Him, the new blooms will be even better. I worry that my faith was stronger and might never be that way again. He reminds me that I needed that faith to survive the childhood ahead of me and the trauma I would go through.

I learned to go to Him at a very young age, afraid that everyone would abandon me. I would need to know to turn to Him and believe He would always be there even when my world shifted under me.  I would need that when my mom was institutionalized again. 

I learned to be grateful for my life and my wonderful friends. I have been blessed with the best friends my whole life. He shows me that I needed them to counteract the hate I experienced from my family. I needed their kind words to hear Him tell me that I was enough – that I was loveable. 

Now my faith is my own, not words of others that I believed without question. I have gone through deep seasons of doubt. My faith has been tested, and He has proven Himself faithful. I have so much to be grateful for. Even during my biggest struggles, He brought me joy. I know this without question now.

He is the author of the new growth in me. He created the new blossoms ready to bloom. I have had my share of pain – often at my own doing, avoiding the deepest cuts He needed to make. 

I find myself grateful tonight for the blooms that once were, now cut away. I see the beauty in them as they were at their peak. That beauty lets me trust in the promise of what God is yet to do in my life. I see the new leaves. I see the stronger stems. 

I’m sure there will still be whining about the cuts – after all I am still me. But I know I can trust Him because He sees the me He designed me to be.

 

By Vicki L. Pugliese

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I Just Need Sunshine

“I just need sunshine, Lord”. The words had barely escaped my lips, as I sat on my sun porch, when the words of the next song “Remember Me” by Mark Schultz started up.

Remember Me. In a Bible cracked and faded by the years.
Remember Me. In a sanctuary filled with silent prayer.
And age to age and heart to heart, Bound by grace and peace.
Child of wonder, child of God. I’ve remembered you…
Remember me.

In a moment only God could design, the sunshine broke free from the clouds just as the words “Child of wonder” were sung. I did remember… many silent prayers in different sanctuaries. I had recently had my childhood Bible returned by my best friend; cracked and faded by many years. I have experienced more than my share of grace and peace.

Overwhelmed and touched so deeply by such a small moment, I felt all the love from all the little moments just like this. All the sunrises and sunsets that were little hugs from God when I needed them most. All the beauty of spring babies that brought me joy over the years – baby cows, baby horses, baby ducks. All the precious moments where my husband, kids, and grandkids have shown me how much I am loved and needed. All the laughter and fun spent with my most precious relationships. The myriad of friends who God has brought into my life exactly when I needed them. Words of encouragement that stuck with me for years to come.

One little timely window of sunshine and I’m placed back on my feet to continue my walk with God. How many of these moments have I forgotten? How many have I not even realized occurred? (That’s far more likely with me. I do miss a lot.) My life has been filled with stress, troubles, trauma, and pain but when I look back – at least this morning – I see all the grace and peace. What a beautiful tapestry my life has been. No tear has been wasted. No heartache has failed to soften me. 

I can’t even imagine a life with out my Lord. My heart hurts for those who don’t have this. I have people I pray for daily, that they would choose Christ or turn back to Him. I want desperately for them to know this grace and peace.

But this morning, I remember. I am grateful for such a God who cares this deeply for me.

By 

Vicki L. Pugliese

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Pray, Watch, Squirrel

My Why statement would be that God might use me to allow someone to feel His love. Which is slightly different from being His hands and feet, both in who gets credit as well as follow through. I have an issue with follow through. My little ADHD brain gets distracted easily, and if it doesn’t, my warped sarcastic sense of humor would surely jump in and muck stuff up.

All my life, as a Christian I’ve been taught to consider where I am as my mission field. God placed me there for a reason. I don’t need to go to Mexico or Africa – there are people right where I am that need to feel God’s love. At one of the churches that I attended our pastor encouraged us to wake up every morning and pray that God would show us how He could use us. Watch for His direction and step out in faith when we felt Him lead us (Pray, Watch, Step). While this sounds great on paper, let me tell you, that is way too many steps for this old girl. There are far too many squirrels in life to distract me, and at one point, this discouraged me.

I have friends that I have prayed about for a very long time. When we put up our new church building, we wrote names that God laid on our hearts on the dry wall before the walls were put up so that they would always be there and prayed over them as a church. Looking back my guess is that when I talked to those friends about Jesus, I did more harm than good. When I’m intentional – somehow it doesn’t work out for me the way I might hope. It’s not a bad practice. It’s a great practice even, for some people.

But God knew how He created me. He knew I’d wander off and say something sarcastic at just the wrong moment because it struck me as funny, and I didn’t think it through. Execution has never been my strong suit. I have great ideas, but my results usually don’t resemble what I intended – even with my words. God knows exactly how to use all my mess ups; all my miscommunications and distractions.

I have a lot of long-time friends; school, Navy, work, various churches. As I have reconnected with old friends over the last few years, what I am finding out is that the moments where God breathed His love into their lives through me, I barely remember. They’re moments when I was just being me, not even being mindful of God. They’re moments I would look at and say, “Of course I did that.” I can’t imagine not doing that.

And that’s the point. God knew.

God knew I wouldn’t even imagine not doing that in that moment. He knew what that friend needed and maybe hadn’t even communicated to me. One of my friends was diabetic and we didn’t even know. I just knew when she needed to eat, she really needed to eat. And since I was in charge of lunch schedules, I worked around that. I can’t imagine not doing that. I wasn’t trying to be kind or thoughtful – it just was the only thing to do.

I can’t take credit for any of those moments I’ve learned about recently, because it wasn’t me. It was how God designed me. I couldn’t mess it up. He didn’t need a plan B, because He wired me to do what I needed to do to show His love. He had a plan and I got to breathe His love into that friend without even being aware it was important.

I’m sure even my children, if asked, would point out moments that I would never think of. And they’ve forgotten all those moments I thought I was rocking that “Mom” thing. That’s how God has used this weird brain and really warped sense of humor of mine. He planned all of it, long before those moments arrived, and planted what I needed in my very DNA. All I ever needed was to love Him and want others to know His love the way I do.

So don’t worry if you feel like you didn’t make a difference the way you thought you were supposed to. God doesn’t have a Plan B. His plan was always going to work, and you might never even notice that it happened.

By Vicki L. Pugliese

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That’s my son

I knew the second I laid eyes on him, even though his back was to me. No doubts – none at all. I immediately started to cry. Seconds before, at the fish tank, at the entrance of the restaurant, I had just said, “Wow, that kid looks so much like Thomas.”  – our grandson.  They lived on the other side of the country, thousands of miles away. The thought that it was Thomas never entered my mind. 

My husband had decided to take me to lunch. We rarely did that because where I worked wasn’t close. I should have seen that as a clue. They had cleaned the house too. That was the big clue I missed. I wasn’t complaining. Seriously though, really clean, and that was the big clue.

My son and his family had conspired with my husband and daughter to surprise me with their visit. I had absolutely no clue. They had been coming and then there was some valid excuse that they couldn’t. I had no reason not to believe they couldn’t make it. By the time I walked into the little Chinese restaurant, it was forgotten. 

But the second I saw his frame – I knew. The clues fell into place. My son had come home for a visit. My daughter-in-law smiled up at me from across the table with her precious face. It filled my heart. It was the best surprise ever.

Our church uses a word “communitas” – not community. It signifies that deeper relationship – the idea of doing life together or serving together. A little like the way that my small home town was more like a community or the way we made our fellow veterans our family when I served in the Navy.

The type of relationship we all search for. That knowing the second you see them – there is someone I love – who loves me. The way I knew that was my son even though he was facing away from me.

It’s that kind of relationship that gets my super introverted family to go to church. They belong there and people know them and love them exactly as they are, no hidden agendas, no wish list of things they should do better at, or be better at. The smiles of those we’ve known and loved for years now, tell us that we are welcomed. Just the way we are. Just as far along in our journey as we have come. No one there sees us with a big list of how we’ve failed or let them down. They’re just happy to see us – as we are them.

I suppose it isn’t a perfect church – that was never the point. It’s our communitas. Other Christians who aren’t perfect, who love us even though we aren’t perfect, even though we make mistakes.They want us to be there. They want us to be part of their journey and to experience God’s love through the way He moves in all of our lives. It brings us and keeps us closer to Him. The one who called us by name before we ever took a breath. He knew what knuckleheads we would be. He knew the mistakes we would make and yet He loved us so perfectly. There’s no stronger desire than to be loved that way, completely loved and fully known.

We have to lay down our lists. Our lists of the wrongs others have done to us. Our list of the disappointments we have felt. Our past hurts. Our lists of how we think this person in our life “should” be. Expectations that set us up for barriers in our relationships that do exactly the opposite of what we desire. To be truly loved in spite of our mistakes and bad choices.

We have to stop judging our church services and having roast pastor for lunch. Stop the hate. The “I hate this kind of music”.  I hate when the church is too full or too empty, too dark, too loud. I hate when other Christians aren’t perfect…   because just like us, they want to be loved while imperfect. 

God put so many wonderful people in my life and none of them are perfect. What an amazing blessing that is. Others just like me, on a journey to spread the great news about how God loves them and isn’t fooled by their masks, or public faces. He knows my heart and loves me more deeply than I could ask. That’s such great news. He put a whole group of people to journey with me, so we could help each other to deepen our relationship with Him and reach out to those who are yet to believe. What a mind blowing blessing that is, don’t you agree?

I hope you find your communitas, or that you create a communitas. So that everyone can know, somewhere out there is someone who loves me so much that they’ll cry at my sight. They love me so much that they recognize me instantly from far away or with my back to them even if I was supposed to be miles away. Someone who knows what a dunderhead I am, but choses to love me anyway. Just the way our Savior does. Just the way I am.

By

Vicki L. Pugliese

Make America Kind Again

We’re expert judges. Shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing With The Stars, American Idol, The Voice have given us years of experience and a feeling that we’re entitled to notice the mistakes of others. We have no problem, even though we are not in the industries discussing how a contestant is a little “pitchy”.  It’s easy to walk right on passed the line and declare a song or a dance a disaster, as if we could easily do better. Over a decade of judges like Simon Cowell and their harsh comments have desensitized us and sometimes find their way into our own words or at least our thoughts. We easily compare two dancers, singers and even songwriters now, forgetting that each person has their own gifts and strengths.

I can’t throw the first stone. As I have learned what the judges are looking for I now spot those tiny imperfections and jump to give my opinion to those watching with me. Not that I could ever dance or sing at those levels. I dismiss their hard work and dedication and the situation these reality shows have put them in as if it’s an easy undertaking.

Social media is not much different. We judge politicians, and even the general public without knowing these people at all. Sure some of us are very informed, but all of our life experiences and those things we hold dear color our perception of them. Words are taken out of context and compared with something someone else says. And for some unknown reason we have decided it’s fine for us to judge even common people we’ve never met. We make meme’s of silly pictures, ridiculing them. I can count myself among those who quickly share. I do enjoy a good chuckle. 

When social media first took off we were more careful, cautious with our words. We didn’t get into lengthy discussions with others of issues, some of which, don’t really mean that much to us. We simply get caught up in the conversation. Bullying on the internet is a well reported phenomenon and perhaps many of us have found ourselves on one side or the other of biting comments. We know better. We don’t treat each other this way in person. We’re much more apt to hold our tongue when we disagree face to face. Or maybe that’s just me. Little by little we slide. Little by little we change the line of what’s acceptable – so that we no longer expect people to be good citizens, kind and polite. We shrug off bad days and laugh when we feel like “what a B*!ch I was”. Little by little, that becomes the norm. Our language slightly looser than it was a decade ago. We’re actually impressed when someone is a decent human being. Suddenly they’re considered a hero. Someone who kindly brings a meal to the homeless, or helps a child with their bike chain. These are no longer common place and so, now, we consider them special for being so kind.

It didn’t happen all at once. The slip was slow and constant. I have seen the change in myself. In my expectations, my language and my actions. It’s easy to shrug them off instead of being saddened by the change, or embarrassed. It’s not really embarrassing anymore, if everyone around you is the same, is it? Or is that just me.

For me it’s time to turn around. Start the walk back up that slope. Be intentional about acts of kindness. Put others before myself – at least as often as I put myself first. It’s time to take my standards and place them somewhere above my expectations, not below. I’m only one. I can’t change anyone else’s mind. I can’t drag people up the hill with me. But I can openly admit I’m turning around, so at very least there are others out there who might question me if they find me heading back down. Accountability. I need that and if you find yourself on the other end of my unkindness – feel free to point that out. Because I want those standards of years gone by, and if my actions or my words might inspire you to join me – even better.

Today perhaps America or even the world is the tiniest bit kinder because I made that choice.

 

Written By

Vicki L. Pugliese

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Sequel to Shades of Blues Available Now

The Light and Dark of It; A Journey Back

The Sequel to Shades of Blues; Into a Fractured Mind

Available Now on Amazon.com and Kindle.

How do you convince others you’re mentally stable, when you can’t trust your own mind?

Eloise and Grant desperately want their fairytale life back. When Eloise returns home from North Warren they are filled with hope – and a little anxious. Treatments, meant to cure, have damaged her mind, and her mental stability is constantly in question.

If she’s not careful she may find herself back in the hell of North Warren. Except now there is no dying child, no sympathetic story and no one at North Warren who cares enough to save her.

 

THE LIGHT AND DARK OF IT; A Journey Back delves deep into the challenges faced once someone is released from institutional care. Set in the 1950’s, THE LIGHT AND DARK OF IT; A Journey Back is the thought-provoking, heartbreaking and heartwarming conclusion of SHADES OF BLUES; Into A Fractured Mind that will leave you cheering Eloise on as you fall in love with the small town of Titusville, Pennsylvania.

 

Don’t have your Shades of Blues copy yet? Order Now.

 

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110%: Too Narrow a View?

“I need you to give 110%!”  I just cringe when I hear that.  Even people who are not good at math have most likely been told that you can’t have more than 100%.  Percent makes it “of the whole”.  You can’t have more than a whole pie of a pie.  You can however have too narrow a view.  Perhaps you are really only considering a slice of the pie.  If you give 110% effort at work, or at a sport, what was the cost to the other pieces of your pie?  Did you give less at home, perhaps to a spouse or your children?  That will cost you in the health of your relationship slice of pie.  Did you negate your need for sleep or exercise?  Those things will eventually cost you in your health slice of pie.  Burnout is right around the corner if you ignore those.  Did you skip picking up, doing the dishes, or laundry, or other household functions?  Those will eventually catch up with you, so your ability to give 110% to whatever you are focusing on, is time limited.  Did you cut out your quiet time with God or your spirituality as a whole?  That will affect… well pretty much everything else in your life.  Somehow it’s usually the first thing we cut out, isn’t it?  Yet it’s kind of the crust to our pie. It’s what everything is built upon.

You could have been thinking about the other valid way to get 110%, though that is still an incorrect way of describing your level of effort.  You could be comparing your effort to an expectation level that is actually too low.  Did you compare your full effort to someone else’s full effort and determine you gave significantly more than they did?  The way that they slice their pie does not change how you sliced yours.  Did you expect to be able to do less and surprise yourself?  Therefore you feel like your effort was more than your ability to give?  I’m guessing you see the issue with the this immediately.  Your ability to do more than you thought you could, is either that you underestimated your time and talents, or you took from a different slice of your pie to be able to focus more fully on the task requiring your effort, thus putting it back into our “too narrow a view” idea.

Looking more closely at the estimation of our ability, that we often compare our actual effort against, can easily go both ways.  On some occasions we are proud of our selves for achieving more than we thought possible.  It was obviously possible, so our theory that it wasn’t was incorrect.  Nonetheless, we also berate ourselves when we don’t complete our self-assigned lists, or complete them to a lower standard than self-assigned as a perfect score.  My supposition is that often the second one is another piece of the pie catching up with us.  It needed our attention previously, but we stole from that piece of the pie temporarily, and now the piper needs to be paid.  Frequently the piper that shows up is the ones we can’t ignore such as poor health or need for rest.

The Bible gives us a great example where God clearly expects us to get enough rest and take care of our own needs in the story of Elijah.  Elijah had just killed all of those prophets of Baal.  He had been on the mountain top in his career, and here comes Jezebel and she’s out for blood.  She wants Elijah dead, and she’s the queen.  Being hated by those in charge, even feeling like you are disliked, is completely draining.  Elijah ran away and hid.  Good plan! I think.  God sends an angel and tells him to get up and eat, and then go rest.  A second time God sent an angel to instruct him to eat and rest.  Finally God tells him that he really needs to eat because the journey is too far.  This is where most of us think the story starts.  This is where Elijah listens for the Lord but the Lord is not in the wind, or the earthquake, but in the gentle whisper.  Elijah had to really be listening to hear him.

I often fail here because I was too busy being a storm of my own to stop and listen.  I’m also a regular steal-er from the health and rest pies, when I’m completing a different task.  It always catches up to me and then I berate myself for not meeting my own standards.

What’s your point already?  Right!

My point is we need that balanced life.  God designed us to need a balanced life.  He then made sure to give us examples in his word where He shows that He values our need to balance our lives.  We innately know that we need a balanced life, that’s not news to us.  But our need to take pride in our effort is the root of the problem.  We get unbalanced when we try to give 110%.  When we stretch ourselves in one area of our life and neglect another, we eventually pay the price.  Sometimes there can be long term consequences such as divorce or estrangement, or long term health issues that can not be resolved or can’t be resolved quickly.

I believe this pride issue, that gets us out of wack, starts with our thought process.  That need to be proud of ourselves or gain the approval of others by giving more than expected is the catalyst.  That desire to overachieve in one area of our life, without looking at the whole pie, is the first harmful action.  Comparing your slice of pie to how someone else slices their pie, on the other hand, only breeds apathy and disdain.  It is even less healthy.  Both are a battle in our minds.  Changing our thoughts to be kinder to ourselves and others is at least part of the answer.  Stopping the internal slave driver, who is fine with you skipping your exercise routine, but forces you to stay late at work.  Stopping that internal comparison to others which keeps you driven to be the best you can be, until the other parts of your pie come crashing in around you, never works out the way we want.  Instead of expecting 110% from yourself, or that you must always get an A, do your best without stealing from the rest of your pie.  Take the whole whole of your life into consideration.

You can’t sleep when you’re dead.  You need to do it now and you need to stop beating yourself up for needing to do it now.  You can’t have the best relationship with your friends and family if you neglect them now, not without taking from another slice of pie to restore it later.  So next time you feel the need to give 110%, acknowledge where you are stealing from.  Acknowledge that you are cutting into another needed piece of your life.  If you are honest with yourself about that and you choose to do that for a season, then give more.  Otherwise look at the whole whole and stop expecting someone else to divide their pie the way you do.  Then most importantly, start with your crust.  Start by listening to God.  Spending time with Him and in His word.  Look at your pie the way He does.  He’s the recipe holder after all.  Who else knows how to make your pie the best it can be?

 

By Vicki L. Pugliese

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