Melissa at Breath of Life, a great blog that I was linked to through someone’s blogroll, has a link to this great blog. This awesome blogger and author discusses the ABC’s of Living Simply. I don’t know why I never clicked on the link before today - probably because I didn’t have time! But I got the results of my “spit” test yesterday, and hubby said, “We absolutely have to stop committing ourselves to so many things.”
For those of you just “tuning in” to my blog, I had to have an adrenal exhaustion test a few weeks ago with samples of my saliva. Gross, I know. Anyway, my doctor mailed me a copy of the results yesterday stating that I have increased levels of cortisol throughout the day and they are really high at night. This is just the opposite of what cortisol levels should be. Normally, when you wake up they are low, they peak at some point during the day, and they should be lowest at night. He said this could be caused by stress (just great), chronic inflammation, insomnia, and from what I’ve read, adrenal tumor. I have to follow-up with him on Monday to discuss the results and what I need to do about them.
Therefore, I absolutely need to live more simply. Melissa at Breath of Life has a theme of Pursuing Peace and Simplicity this year, and, as I commented on her blog, it may take a 12-step program to teach me to say no, but I pray that I will be successful in my attempt to simplify my life.
Filed under: Faith, Family, Health, Prayer, Working Moms | Tagged: adrenal exhaustion, fatigue, insomnia, peace, simplicity, stress
It’s hard work, but you’ll be so glad you gave it a shot. Trust me!
I pray for God to lead you. It took some trial and error and some listening to my own body as a young Mom for me to learn my limits. So much of it is just trial and error and willingness to learn from those stressful seasons…to not repeat them. Hub and I are dependant on each other in this because often we don’t remember how full things got and we are prone to keep maxing out instead of realizing we don’t need to do XYZ along with ABC and EFG again.
Along the same lines, some seasons were so refreshing for him, but unbelievably stressful on the rest of the family due to times and back-logs that happened at work as a result.
Perhaps one of us had just been very sick for a season and the other really needed to lighten up while we found rest. We run all commitments by each other before saying “yes”, and we listen to each other.
With young kids, we took turns “your season to minister with the ‘extra thing’…next year will be my pick while you lay back…what do you have next year?”
So yeah, we no longer take seasonal commitments without talking things over and praying seriously about what a family should look like. I want a few nights a week at home with supper on the table and normal evening hours for homework.
Somehow, that has helped us with “balance”. It’s helped us learn to focus on building our family as we grow in ministry instead of letting ministry burn us out.
Personally, I’ve also had to learn to take the medicines I need in stressful seasons instead of letting the added ministry stressed kill family times. I used to be so anti-medicine that it stole life.
Just some thoughts I felt inclined to pass on from my own life bank! Keep striving for balance!
Amen sister Maggie! I agree with all that!