Making Space for my Soul

I was at a lunch gathering of a bunch of women in the district of churches we belonged to when a question was thrown out to a couple of us, "How do you make space for your soul to breathe?"  This question hit me head on and even made me angry.  Its a really benign question on the surface but deep down it hit a nerve, it hit this place where I consistently struggle.  I was frustrated because I was already frazzled, I had done school with my kids at Panera (always an experience), I was already planning towards the weekend, I needed to pack for a retreat, drop my cousin at the airport in Denver come back, clean the basement we live in so people could stay at mom's for Thanksgiving and then head to Rapid City for Thanksgiving and I was sick.  There are certain areas in my life that I don't seem to be capable of honesty, I don't seem to be able to say this is too much, I don't seem to be capable of saying I'm tired, I just get grumpier and angrier and punish everyone who I won't say no to.  I'm pretty sure its a super healthy way of handling life.

Even in the midst of this frazzledness I have this question burning into my heart, how do I make room?  This conversation explodes inside my head and I'm sorta scared that the rest of the world can hear what my heart is saying.   I started with answers, that weren't really answers to the question.  It was like a really hard question on an essay exam, where you start by working around the problem until you can work yourself into the core of the problem.  My answers were, I like reading, it feeds my soul, I should read more.  I like working out, I should work out more.  I like cooking, I should cook more.  I hope you are laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, I hope you caught on right away, that I was just creating another list to fulfill, only this list was supposed to bring me rest.  The dilemma is that I never find rest in lists.

I spent the entire month of December trying to figure this out, how was I going to make space for my soul to breathe, to find rest.  I had to start the process by asking myself if I even thought it was important enough to make a priority.  That was the easy question, I know that when my soul isn't finding rest, when its not being fed, when its going from activity to activity that I implode.  I get sick, I get crabby and I start crying over everything.  I have to make space.  But how and am I really willing to say "no", to be honest, to admit that I am a weak human who needs space, to say that I trust God enough to know that he can accomplish his plans without me always being the go to girl.  And coming to a place of a deep knowledge that he loves me because of who I am, not because of what I do.

One of these days I will find a rhythm to making space, to leaving room for my soul to be fed.  Right now, its something like a baby learning to walk, stand up, fall down, stand up , walk two steps, fall down.  Its not smooth, its not graceful and I keep falling down.  But I believe that if pursue this rhythm I will soon be running an dancing gracefully.  And I believe that my heavenly father is watching me, delighting in my first steps, because He knows the path that I am on and where this journey will take me.