A post Lenten update

Well, as many of you know that I decided to give up yelling for Lent. I kind of thought I was crazy, but I really wanted to do it. I will say that the first week was the most difficult. I caught myself several times and slipped twice. After the first week passed, it definitely became easier.

It's about 2 weeks post Easter and have I started yelling again? Yes, I have yelled some. I can honestly say that the hardest week was the one immediately following Easter. I failed many times in that week. My trigger during that particular week seemed to be hormonal, which has always been one for me.

What have I done to eliminate/reduce yelling?

1. I stop and take a deep breath. It sounds silly, but sometimes just taking the time to breathe before you respond can totally change the way you respond to a situation.

2. I started eliminating stressors in my life. In my case, my stressors were directly related to be over committed. It hasn't happened overnight, but I'm prayerfully eliminating things.  Many of these things won't actually change until the next school year, but knowing change is around the corner has been helpful.

3. Making sure that I eat breakfast. I will admit that I am a horrible breakfast eater. I know that it is a terrible habit. I'm still not perfect on this one, but I know that low blood sugar and hunger are definite triggers for me. I'm also trying to add in a high protein snack during my mid day crash.

4. Trying to reduce my distractions AKA apple products. This is pretty hard because I try to keep my phone on me all day, so it is really easy to pick it up and start playing on Facebook or Instagram.  I love reading blogs and researching and having my iPhone at my fingertips makes it really easy to do just that. However, by not using it as much during the day, I don't snap at my children nearly as much.

5. Offer grace rather than anger. To myself. To others. Everyone deserves grace. Again, I'm nowhere near perfect, but it is a start. During that breath that I'm taking, I try to ask myself if I'm showing grace in my reaction.

6. Getting more sleep. Because I'm a night owl, I often stay up way too late. My burst of energy comes after dinner time. My kids aren't super early risers, but they usually wake up between 7:30-8:00 am. I'm making an effort to get in bed by 11:00pm and allow myself 8 hours of sleep.  When I'm awake until 2:00 am and waking 6 hours later, it catches up to me quickly. I can assure you that sleepyhead Alicia is grouchy and snarky. Also, the more I research, the more I think my sleep issues are hormonal...which brings me to my next point.

What else am I going to do?

I'm going to make some dietary changes. I had gone gluten free with my entire family last year and slowly started introducing it after about 6 months. I realize now that I really felt better when I wasn't consuming gluten. I'm also going to slowly cut out caffeine and sugar. This is going to be really difficult. I'm going to start in about two weeks, when I don't have as many early morning obligations. After doing some research, I think these three steps will help with my hormonal issues that cause so many mood swings for me. I have never officially been diagnosed with thyroid issues, but I have almost every single symptom of hypothyroidism and borderline TSH levels. I've been researching how to heal it with dietary changes and praying this will help the out of whack hormonal issues I deal with regularly. It also seems as if adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism go hand in hand. Honestly, even if these are not issues, changing my diet won't hurt me at all. I don't expect this to be an easy change or a quick fix. I'm more focused on long term healing with these dietary changes.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

So there you have it. God really blessed me during this Lenten season. I truly feel that ending my Lenten journey with the Walk to Emmaus was such fabulous timing. It really gave me an opportunity to re-focus and re-prioritize. For my friends who dove into this challenge with me, I'd love to hear your feedback. What was hard for you? What changes did you make?

Jesus, Can I tell you how I feel?

"Jesus, Jesus,

Can I tell you how I feel?

You have given me Your Spirit.

I love you so."

These are the lyrics to a very simple song that I learned this weekend at my Emmaus Walk.  Those lyrics now give me chills every time I sing them.

Guess what scripture was in my devotion this morning?

Psalm 27:8

My heart has heard you say , “Come and talk with me.”

And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

The purpose of this post is not really about my Emmaus experience. I’m honestly still processing it as I haven’t even been back a full day. I will say that the secrets and mysteries make sense. I guess you could say I drank the kool-aid. I was insanely annoyed with almost everyone in the Emmaus community before I left for my walk. It all makes sense now. It was a magical experience for me. I experienced God’s love like I have never experienced in my life. And what I felt was just a tiny portion of His love and quite frankly that is overwhelming. Like I’m still kind of freaked out about how much He loves me. I have a hard time accepting love and He revealed that to me this afternoon as I was thinking about a certain part of my walk. 

But the cool thing about this weekend….I was able to tell Jesus how I have been feeling.

Friends, I’m burned out. That’s how I’m feeling. Burned out, overcommitted, and not enjoying serving Him because I have my hands in too many baskets. I started looking through some of my older blog posts, starting about 4 years ago. I was eager to find out where He wanted me to serve and praying for new opportunities. I got so caught up in how good to felt to serve, that I didn’t question any new service opportunities.  Before I even realized what happened, I was hanging at the end of the rope and not sure what to do. I have so much going on that I barely have time for my family and close friends (who fit in the family category for me) or my own personal quiet time. That is not okay.

Here’s the thing. I love Jesus. I absolutely do. He is freaking awesome. He gives me hope. He gives me courage. He carries me. I love Him so much that I don’t want to let Him down. He’s done so much for me that I can’t ever do enough to repay Him. But you know what?  I don’t have to repay him. I can’t repay Him. I just have to accept His love and grace. I don’t have to serve Him to repay Him. I serve Him because I love others and I want them to see just a tiny glimpse of His love.  But I don’t have to do everything. I’m not called to do everything. So, I’m going to chill out a bit and start praying about the new opportunities that come along my path. It may not be my time.  One thing was loud and clear to me over the weekend. I need to free up more time so that I can spend more time in His word and then write about it.  I also need to be careful and evaluate if I am serving to please a person because I simply cannot say no, or if I am serving because God wants me to do so. I’m a people pleaser. I always have been. I gave that to Him this weekend. I’m excited to see how making these changes will impact my walk with Him.

I continued reading in Psalm 27 and I came upon one of my favorite verses.

Psalm 27:14

Wait patiently for the Lord.

Be brave and courageous.

Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Waiting patiently for Him is difficult. Really difficult. It actually can really suck. I pretty much hate waiting. The beauty of it is that He will give us patience. There are many things I’m waiting to understand right now.

Lamentations 3:24-26

I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him!

The Lord is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him.

So it good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

Keep waiting and searching for Him. Be brave while you wait. He does not give us a spirit of fear. Keep telling Him how you feel. He will reveal Himself to you in some pretty incredible ways.

Peace out, homies. Let me know if I can pray for you. It would be an honor.