Some thoughts from a moment when I can actually think for a minute <3

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that I have to write a reminder each year to prepare me for the onslaught that is January? One of the blogs I like to follow is a gal who lives in Ireland. She writes about home life. Her current series is focusing on wintering well. 

In the posts last week she encouraged us to embrace the slower pace. Her words painted scenes of warm mugs of tea in front of a fire with books and blankets. 

Yeah. 

No. 

Not happening. 

We have had yet another soldier fall to whatever the virus du jour is this week. We left home early yesterday and I am up again today. 

There have been a plethora of ball games, appointments and trying to squeeze in laundry and nutrition between it all. 

I did have time Monday to open my morning devotions and I did something I have never done before. I paper clipped the days I have missed and just started in where I should be that day. I hope to go back during some kind of down time and really read and study what I missed. 

Often in these settings, I read rapidly trying to catch up and I just don’t think that is what Mary would have done. It seems more a Martha thing to quickly read several pages so I can feel the box is checked. 

Monday’s devotion was an attention grabber for me and has stuck with me this week. Which is what Bible study and devotions should do, right? They should make us stop and think and notice how we are living. 

The writer of this day talked about how we are constantly being “counseled” in the world we live in. Think about it. 

Social media posts tell me what to eat and how to exercise. Political posts from the right and left tell me how to think. Psychologist and pseudo-psychologists diagnose me with all manner of acronyms. 

I have conversations with people who are either very close to me or just passing by. As we make small talk, counsel of all kinds is offered as suggestions are made or anecdotes of personal experience in similar issues are shared.

Sermons, podcasts, advertisements on TV between the games, billboards, newscasters and talking heads are all giving advice on everything. Even on subjects I really wasn’t that tuned in to. 

According to the devotion I read (more advice and counsel being offered….) we get overwhelmed. We have access to more information than we even had questions about. 

I have been noticing this week how many bits of counsel I am taking in and it is no wonder my mind is usually jumping all over the place.

So of course, the devotion made a wise suggestion. The words directed me to seek first what God’s counsel is each day. To write His word on my heart and to set my mind to seek what He is saying. 

Is it easy?

My goodness no. 

Is it worth it to try? 

Oh yes, very much so. 

For me it means opening the devotion before I open the phone. It means using the quiet spaces in the car, waiting in line, cooking dinner, washing dishes, switching laundry to meditate on the counsel I received earlier that day. 

It takes discipline. 

Like any path that is better for us, there is work involved. 

Are we willing to do the work instead of just taking in so much counsel that leaves us confused, tired and anxious? 

I think we are. 

Let’s encourage one another to seek the counsel of the Lord as we journey onward this year   <3