Offer it Up

I'm having a really really hard time focusing on the need-to-do details of my life right now. Like I'm all ADDish or something. Constantly feeling overwhelmed, like there's a phone call I'm forgetting to make or a list I ought to be writing or a chore I ought to be doing (well, we all know that is true) but I'm all a-muddle and get pull myself together enough to figure it out.

It is difficult to go through life feeling like this and not feel like an utter failure.

Next week is Thanksgiving and we are packing and joining family at a cabin in the mountains, which means we have to coordinate and import all our food, some kitchen gear, etc. Along with clothes etc. And I need to think about that, and make that happen. Along with a goodly pile of other things. Schooling the kids? Perhaps they can do that themselves, eh? Mostly they do.

And I've had a caffeine withdrawal headache for two days because I'm going off caffeine once again. How do I keep getting addicted to that stuff? Over and over again like a stupid.

I wish I could just run away to the forrest and not deal with anything but sitting on a stump and praying and tinkering with a fire for a few days. That would be nice. But alas, life calls, and I'm at a point where life itself feels like a mortification. I think that feeling just comes from the headache. As my Roman Catholic friends say: "Offer it up!" So I do that.

Offering up the pile of towels and rags that need to get folded, the bed that needs to get made, the laundry that needs doing, the boring brown dresses, my obesity and fibro, my sick daughter, asperger's syndrome, the fact that I never have enough time to do everything and I always feel like I'm running around (albeit doing necessary errands) when I ought to be at home...all of it. Offering it up.

Lately during Litugy at the part where we are called to lift up our hearts, and we respond: "We lift them up unto the Lord!" I can hardly sing for the lump in my throat. All I can imagine is a broken (ground meat more like), bleeding mess of a heart that I'm offering up to God. Offer it up.

All of it, even the lack of focus. Offer it up. I lift it up unto the Lord.

Comments

elizabeth said…
it's hard when life's details weigh on us. My love to you.
Mimi said…
Wow. What an amazing thought. Thank you, I needed to hear that.
And hugs to you.
Amy said…
Lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed also. I've always been busy, but now I'm BUSY, and any hint of my previous contemplative life seems to have gone up in a poof of smoke. I've been grumbling that if I just had more time to pray, it would be alright. If I just had more time to pray...

But I'm seeing more clearly each day that I still have the same amount of time to pray that I always have...24 hours a day. There isn't less time. I just have to choose to keep using my time for God instead of burying myself in a mountain of busyness.

Praying without ceasing means praying even when the responsibilities of life don't cease. As you say, every moment can be an act of prayer lifted up to the Lord. Every minute that seems filled to bursting with things of the world always has more than enough room left over for God in it, too. We just have to offer it to Him. And like all offerings, they mean more when they hurt a little to give them.
Dollymama said…
I wish I could give you a big hug. Thank you for sharing that.