Personal Accomplishment Does Not Equal Personal Value.

Today, I sit down in a heap of exhaustion.

I want to blame the tired on the warm weather, but I know the truth.

I’ve slipped back into production mode, that unhealthy lie that tells me that productivity equals worth.

I am a results oriented girl and I too often equate personal accomplishment with personal value, and that’s a frenemy I’ve tried to shake off for the last 20 years.

I’m forcing myself to sit,  though so much around me is undone. (There are FOUR baskets of laundry waiting to be folded in my bedroom. Our little guy has Legos and soup pans scattered around the entryway. My wedding to-do list is still long. I have upcoming holidays to make festive for my kids and dinner to prepare.)

I think I need to work more, but what I need is stillness and recalibration. I know it’s a grace from God that I even recognize this.

I brew some tea, and grab my Bible and a pencil. Before I jump back in, I need to make sure that I’m working as worship and not as a way to feed the idol of self-worth or selfish ambition.

I need to re-check my marching orders because I fear I’ve been AWOL.

Am I doing this to love God and my neighbor well?

Or is my cleaning/cooking/errand/planning fueled by selfish-ambition? Personal desires that have gripped and are now controlling me?

Am I like a child at the ocean, building sand castles, crafting walls with cupped hands that give me a sense of control but will ultimately crumble with the next wave?

Is my work God’s work for me? Or am I putting my hand to the plow for what I believe will bring me happiness. What could be sadder than ending the day realizing that I lived a Sarah-oriented life with my work?

Instead of being frustrated by the work,

instead of seeing people as interruptions to the work,

instead of viewing waiting, or re-doing, or potty training, or once again tying on toddler shoes as a wrench in my plans for the ” important work” I had to get done today,

I’m praying that God will remind me again and again that this is the job, and these are the people, and these are the situations, the very appointments that He has ordained in which I can offer Him worship today.

These “interruptions” are not to be despised or by-passed,  but to be worshipped through!

Lord, help me joyfully stop to listen to toddler tales and teenage dreams. Help me sit and hear the heartache of the broken without checking the clock or worrying about my to-do list. Help me take each moment as an assignment, whether picking up toys, making beds, carpooling kids, discipling little hearts, or stopping to hug the hurting. Let me see it all as a way to worship you and not as a measure of productivity or not.

I’m giving myself this reminder because I need it. Perhaps you do, too?