Over the last several weeks I've been thinking about making some changes to my much-to-busy life. Minor speed bumps on the road of life have kept me away from the blog (among them a toe surgery, car wreck and thousands of dollars in unexpected medical bills). Just the disasters I needed to drive some change. These disasters are nowhere near what others have experienced lately.
As the earthquake and tsunami in Japan threatened nuclear reactors and caused us to reexamine energy policy on a broad scale, I am wondering about my own use of “energy.” Beyond the crafty mantra to, “Reduce, reuse, recycle!” that my family consistently tries to implement better than we already do, I’m now trying to take a more deeply analytical approach to my own energy use. One sign that I’m not using energy efficiently is that I come home from work every day completely exhausted. Another is that I have so much to do that I completely neglect some obligations and the things I remember to do are not done as well as they should be. Like many of my friends, I am a woman who wears too many hats. I am spread too thin, trying to do too much. I use my energy very inefficiently. I find that I don’t do any of these things justice; they are deprived of the energy they deserve, despite my best intentions. And I am left feeling guilty about it.
For someone committed to wearing my hats well, this is an extremely uncomfortable position in which to find myself. The solution: to give up some of my hats. Take them off so that someone better suited might pick them up to wear them wonderfully herself. Ironically, there is a sense of guilt in making this choice. If I give up a commitment (or two or three), does it mean that I don’t care? Someone looking in from the outside will certainly think that’s true and judge me accordingly. Before I give something up do I need to have someone else in mind to assume responsibility for the hat I’m taking off? Or if I let go, will God take care of those things that I am not able to? And if I let go of something that I’m not meant to let go of will I cause myself or others to suffer? All of these what-ifs are leading me to believe that I need to should approach this decision carefully and prayerfully. Things need to be let go of…it’s just a matter of what and when. When I let go, I need to trust that things will be taken care of by a power much greater than me. If I choose those things that use my energy most efficiently, I trust that in the grand scheme of things, I will be leaving things open for others to use their energy the way they were meant to as well.
How did I get myself in this overextended mess in the first place? I might be trying to make up for those I saw fail to live up to commitment that I thought they should have upheld. But that is really not my judgment to make, is it? But I can make some decisions to use my energy wisely today. Right now. So I will.
