Life has a way of coming at you sometimes in a way that is
completely overwhelming. It just keeps
coming without regard for human need for rest or peace of mind. Anybody know what I mean?
Well, life has been pretty overwhelming for me for a lot of
the past couple months. There were weeks
when just about every minute of life was filled with sleep, work, and other
activities- all good things, but just a lot.
It’s weeks like this when Friday evening comes around and I wonder what
on earth happened to the past week, it just seems like a complete blur. Having a full time job and a part time job is
going pretty well so far, but it makes for some long days (but good days!).
And then there were a couple of weeks when I wondered what
would come next, what life would throw at me next. I felt like one thing came right after the
other and life didn’t stop coming at me for anything. Life was relentless. I didn’t have two minutes to breathe, to
rest, to fully realize all that was happening.
My grandma had a massive stroke and died two days later. The rest of life- work, etc.- continued on
and the speed and intensity of work and activities seemed to increase. Then my grandpa had a stroke (he’s doing
pretty well now in his recovery). And
the rest of life continued on with work and events and responsibilities and
relationships and family.
Completely overwhelming.
But that’s the way life is sometimes, and it would be
unnatural if life weren’t completely overwhelming sometimes. But I have a request for life: let’s keep the
overwhelmingnes at a minimum. Okay??? Good.
Life has settled down and I have had time to grieve, to
reflect, to catch my breath.
In all this I often turned to writing to do something with
all the experience, to get things on paper and off my mind, to try to make
sense of it. The writing was sporadic
and random and I’m going to try to put some of it in a form that will make
sense and get it on my blog. Some of
this writing was done in in random places- on the back of crumpled up receipts
I dug out of the bottom of my purse for example- so it will require some
putting together physically and thematically.
I wrote a lot that I hope others will find something familiar in my
experiences and resonate with it. And
some of this writing was done for me and will remain between me and God (for
now at least). (I actually have quite a
few blogs posts in the works, it has just been the task of finishing up these
writings that has been an issue lately.)
In my time of being completely overwhelmed with life over
the past month I spent a lot of time in prayer.
There were of course a variety of prayers in a variety of states of mind
and in a variety of emotions. But no
matter the words or the way I said those words in my prayers, I turned to God
and I asked God to be with me and I knew that God was with me. It was this that sustained me through the
overwhelmingness of life.
