Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed.

Sometimes, it feels like I live my entire life in this state. There’s too much to do. Not enough time to do it. No appreciation for any of it. Not enough money to make it happen. Not enough sleep to make it bearable. And just when you think you’ve hit your breaking point, the car won’t start, the dog vomits on your best Liz Claiborne black leather flats, and you remember that you forgot your dentist appointment, only to learn you have to wait three months to get in to see her again.

Oh, Lord, it’s too much!

My friend, Cecille, once told me that the only things worth doing are the God-sized tasks. That’s a hard thing for me because I like the easy road. I like to find my comfort zone and stay in it. But that comfort zone is a dark, selfish place where instead of growing and becoming better, you become smaller, harder, and weaker. And it’s impossible to help anyone else when you’re hiding in your comfort zone.

Last week, I was reading Romans 4:5 in The Message and it really spoke to me in this place of being overwhelmed.

“If you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God.”

It reminded me of what my old friend, Tommy Tyson, used to say that we aren’t supposed to fight the battle; we’re just supposed to be victorious.

But how does that work for a performance-driven girl like me? How does that work for someone like me who has always believed that people only love me for what I do? How does that work for a girl like me who finds her identity in what she does? Don’t I have to do it all? Be everything for everyone?

And in the midst of this raging insecurity and under the pain of these crushing burdens, I recognize that it’s all impossible. If love is waiting on me to earn it, it will always be unattainable. If life is waiting on me to live it, it will always be unreachable. If the problems are all waiting for me to fix them, they are going to remain broken forever.

Katie knows what it’s like to be overwhelmed. My gosh, she’s the single mother of 13 little girls, how could she not be overwhelmed?! When I look at Katie’s life and I look at mine, I’m really even ashamed to say that I feel overwhelmed. I mean, at least I have dependable water and electricity! But in the face of this great, God-sized task that Katie has been given, she chooses to live one day at a time, letting God do miracle after miracle to get her through each day.

Have you ever been overwhelmed? How do you face it? What’s the last God-sized task you faced?

This post is part of a weekly book discussion that me, Jason Stasyszen, and some of our friends are having about the memoir, Kisses from Katie. Please feel free to stick around and chat, whether you’ve read the chapter or not! If you have written a response to this week’s chapter, please link up at the widget below. And please everybody, go see what Jason has to say on the topic!