Living Beyond Yourself

This is a long write for which I apologize but it touches on the pulls of Women's schedules in the many seasons of our lives. 


I think young women will appreciate it that they are not alone in feeling overwhelmed and that in the end you find out that it is the Father leading us through these challenges of living our womanhood bringing us peace in what we do. Those of us who are in a later season of our life will see that this is what a committed and Godly woman does in her life. In reality it is something to be proud of.

Living Beyond Yourself 
  

Did you ever have a time in your life when you felt that you were on maximum input and could not handle another thing? It can be funny on retrospect, but it is not funny when it is actually happening. We all have had those times when, for instance, all three of the children have soccer practice at the same time across town from each other. It is an even more harrowing experience when your car is in the shop, and you are sharing the other car with your husband who needs to be picked up on yet another side of town so that he can attend a work related dinner just as the practices end. 

There was the time when I was running a thriving day care and car pooling all over the Bay Area. Taking some of my children to achool and then moving on to the battered women's shelter to pick up my little charges or driving my oldest with the car filled to the third seat to their Hayward high school were only a couple of my typical daily challenges. I still have a magnet on my refrigerator that says, “Is there life after carpool?”

During that same era I managed to fulfill the role of Den Mother for Cub Scouts, served as the president of the PTG for three years, and attend to the needs of the an elementary youth group as their Coordinator. Add to this taking the children to their music or dance lessons, swimming lessons, and to any other activity they cooked up as being “cool, Mom!” We had their munchkin friends over on a regular basis with all that went with that kind of happening.

In addition to all of that I had a life as well. I sang in the church choir, did crafts and attended a stitchery group, and “played” with my own friends. Oh, and I must not forget my jobs as a wife, hostess, and daughter. My years as the “in between generation” caring for aging parents when they were living in my home is a necessity to remember. In the whirlwind that I lived, and I am not saying my life was any different from any other red blooded American woman of the late twentieth century, I was happy. I worshipped God and felt His blessings. In fact, I seemed to thrive on the cyclone that was my life. I could multi task along with the best of them as my life careened towards the adulthood of my children and my own “golden years of freedom.”

Yes, I was indeed “living beyond myself.” Without the grace of God in my life I would have become immobilized in that harrowing tension filled but happy labyrinth I was negotiating on a daily basis. I always dreamed of and thought I knew I would have days of calm when the awesome and sometimes overwhelming responsibilities of younger womanhood were removed, and I was free to make choices based on just my husband’s and my own needs. What on earth was I thinking of? 

This brings me back to my original question about feelings of having maximum input and not being able to handle another thing. While things ARE different the multitude of tasks that pull on me are still there. Nothing seems to have changed. I am beginning to think it is a case of Murphy’s Law. My involvements and duties seem to be expanding to fill the emptiness of time that I had expected would be the gift of these years. What could of or should have been a time of relaxation and freedom from excessive responsibilities seems to have become more of the same. The fact that I am older and enjoying less energy than I used to have makes the daily skateboard ride difficult at times. Sometimes my life has felt as though even God could not help me dig my way out. 

Then one more activity presented itself to me. It came in the midst of my working on a myriad of health issues. I was attempting to understand and take control of some serious issues. This required going to many doctor’s appointments and classes as well as doing research about my possible choices. The input and the output concerning my health concerns was tremendous. The car issue has not changed either. My son needed to use my car, and we had been a one car couple for about three months. More stress! In addition there were many family issues that suck the joy and life out of a parent.

You are probably wondering when I am going to get off this detour to reveal the new activity. This was one addition to my weekly schedule that I knew I must make time for. It is a Bible Study entitled “Living Beyond Yourself.” Am I “living beyond myself” I wondered? I silently joked in my mind about the name of the topic. I would be happy to just be “living beside myself” was my cynical self talk. I sardonically pointed out to myself that I am, in fact, “living behind myself.” What does a child do when she falls behind? She runs to catch up. She stumbles and gets tired. She finally sits down and refuses or is unable to move. She remains behind crying with frustration. Inside I was that paralyzed child.

I might have been thinking that not even God could help me. Wrong! Have you ever noticed that our Father God shows up at just the right time, at the time of maximum input in our lives. He adds the additional input which becomes an intervention with greatest relevance to our lives. We have built the issues of our life into giants that crowd our minds just like twenty five college students sardined into a Volkswagen Bug would crowd the driver of the car. It stunts our ability to think or perform. The input of the Father is just the right medicine (speaking of health issues) that brings the giants down to their proper size, midgets relatively, and into control. I love it when that happens. His input is not the straw that broke the camels back or that pushes out the window of that overcrowded Volkswagen.

He speaks into our lives and through His words things start to fall into perspective. Suddenly you have courage and stamina to face health issues or family drama. This is what is happening to me as I am beginning my study of “Living Beyond” myself. The facts and ideas being presented by God, the study plan, and my current co passengers on this road to Him are not entirely new, but the paradigm is. Somewhere along the way I had really taken a detour from the path I had been divinely predestined to travel. I had lost sight of the fact that I am royalty, adopted through Abraham’s belief in the promise that God had given to him about his seed. That seed is Jesus and even me because of my adoption when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. What a wondrous understanding this it! Oh, I had understood it from the beginning, but along the way I has lost track of my own awe of this miracle of love I had received. The sad result was that I had become overwhelmed with my own life and stuff.

There is an old hymn that says, “Only believe. Only believe. All things are possible if you believe.” To believe is to have faith, but faith needs to be put into action in a persons inner thought and prayer life. That is when all things are possible. Mountains of worry, concern and over extendedness can be brought down to mole hills in the process. 

This is where this new intervention from my Father is saving his child from despair. I am seeing my spiritual childhood as the child of the Almighty God with new understanding. The pain and trials I have been going through reflect God who holds me in the palm of His hand. Whatever I am going through at any given time that threatens to paralyze me has also been suffered by my Father. I deal with health problems. He also knows the pain and suffering of sickness and death because of Jesus. He has endured disobedience, disrespect, and disappointment in my behavior and choices that I have also experienced in dealing with my own family issues.

Jesus died on the cross so and now lives in heaven. Because of Him my final destination will be heaven for eternity. His path was to follow the will of His Father. My path to heaven must be to follow my Father’s will even though the route is filled with trials to be endured and errors to be corrected. It has only been a week since I started my Bible study, and already His intervention has brought around a new paradigm as I look at my overly stimulated life. His wonderful intervention at just the right time is enabling me to embrace the scripture found in Galatians 2:20 where Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” There is also comfort in the Word found in James 1:2 that says, “Consider it pure joy , my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” That is a mighty ideal, not an easy one, but one filled with hope and encouragement.

The underlying promise from God that I read in all of this is that my pain is not without reward. I also realize that whenever I get bogged down in my own stuff along will come the Great Psychologist with a new intervention that will shake me out of myself. There used to be a t-shirt that said, “Livermore is not the end of the earth, but you can see if from here.” Well my God will step in with new input that will boost me up to a new level, a higher branch, where, even though I am not yet perfectly mature or completely wise I will be able to see the goal from there.

Living

Living “beyond” myself

An interesting thought

Still trying to discover myself

Living “behind” myself actually

Trying, scrambling to catch up

A miracle approaches

And my Abbah, Daddy comes to me

Shows me more than I had seen

Gives fresh ways to look at things

Lifts me up and together we soar

To perch on a higher branch

Closer to the sky.

Closer to HIM

Almost there.

Moving on!

Corinne Mustafa