Sometimes you just don't feel like it!

Sometimes you just don't feel like it. You don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning. You don't feel like going grocery shopping to fill those empty cupboards.You certainly don't feel like paying bills, disciplining kids or taking out the trash.  You don't feel like doing much of anything. I have had the better part of three weeks feeling this way----I just don't feel like it!

And such great timing for this to happen. Thanksgiving is this week, Christmas is right around the corner, and I am the chief cook and bottle washer for both of these events in our family. What if I just cancelled everything? What if I sent out a mass email to all the family saying---"I just don't feel like it"! How could I even entertain such an idea? How un-motherly of me. What happened to Whole-Hearted Parenting--Mother-Culture and all the other things that I once embraced as a mom? What about all those seminars I attended---some that I even spoke at-- that encouraged me to be the life-bringer to my family? SIGH.

I am usually an upbeat, positive person that sees the glass half- full and a bright rainbow over every  cloud. But this dark, feel-sorry-for-myself attitude has hung around a little too long.I just can't seem to shake it. And even though I do have some circumstances in my life that should cause me to be sad and let-down, that doesn't usually mean that it should affect me as it has. But sometimes down is the only way it seems to go.

Then this week I read something that changed my entire attitude this week as a mom, as a Christian, as a person. We have been reading Ann Voskamp's book "One Thousand Gifts" for our bookclub. Her writing style is different, to say the least, and sometimes I got lost in her imagery. But more often than not, as I was reading along, something she said would just jump off the page at me and tuck itself deeply in my heart. She talks alot about thankfulness and looking at our life through a completely different lens---the lens of Eucharisteo (thanks). You will have to read the book yourself to get all of the meaning in that one word. But one of the quotes that dramatically changed my attitude this week I would love to share with you.

"Are stress and worry evidences of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined to keep gave fixed on God?"--Ann Voskamp    


That was it! I had stress. I had worry. And I was too undisciplined! Why did I have "spiritual Alzheimers" (another one of her nuggets)? Why did I keep forgetting about Him? What a dummy I am. I had tried everything from shopping to sleeping to crying and nothing was working to get me out of my funk. But here it was---in black and white written by a pig farmer's wife in Canada. Someone that I may never meet, but that brought me back to the truth that I knew all along but was not applying in my life. He is always there....even when I don't feel like it, HE does. So after a little confessing, a little praying and a little singing I feel better. 100%? No--not yet~~ but better.

And now I do" feel like it". So bring on that turkey--stuffing--cranberries--dirty dishes--mess and chaos that goes along with all family holidays. I am ready. I am smiling. I FEEL LIKE IT!