What If There Is Another Way?

Many church services (church being the manmade construct of what people “think” God is all about) I have attended over the last 10 years always seem to be based around serving others, helping others, putting others first. Biblical stories such as the Good Samaritan and the commandments that Jesus gives us, number 1 to love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. Number 2 To love your neighbour as yourself. (More on this in a minute) But how do we do these things without completely burning ourselves out?

They don’t teach us that, in certain seasons to serve our family is enough, it always feels like that’s never enough, especially if your a mum. Like we are meant to go out and help change other peoples worlds before we change our own.

I have spent the last 20 years thinking about my family and our farm, and for the last 12 years I’ve been thinking about my daughter, husband, parents, gran, brother, sister in law, nieces, nephews in laws. I have tried to the best of my ability to serve them as I felt I could, and be there when I was needed and it feels like it has literally bitten me in the ass.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I believed that this wasn’t enough. That I must go out into the world and help others as well, and never think about myself, and I guess this feels especially poignant this week as I am preparing myself for a 6 hour infusion of God knows what to help to calm the raging fire within my body that is Rheumatoid Arthritis. 37 with arthritis that doesn’t just affect my hands, as it does many oh no every joint in my body is being attacked by my own immune system, from my shoulders, to my SI joints, then there is my brain and the inflammation in there causing forgetfulness and fog and not forgetting my lungs are full of some gunk or another, which was feared to be cancer at the beginning of the year, but it turns out its just more inflammation because it doesn’t know where to go.

You name it my body seems to be doing it in the last 6 years. So another body break down doing the thing that the church seems to deem as the “right” thing loving my neighbour, but not loving myself. Because quite frankly most of the time I hate myself. The way I look, the way I act, the way I think I hate it. I hate that I have to take medication everyday just to get out of bed and at least do some small action to make me feel like I am not completely useless. The worst of it is the level of brain fog and forgetfulness is unbelievable when this was once my greatest asset, to remember names, details things that help others feel like that are listened to and important. Then to top things off I can no longer serve or help anyone else other than myself, because I just don’t have the extra energy.

So what is the church’s teaching on that? That we should shine brightly in the darkness, but I don’t have the energy anymore. I can’t work hard at anything anymore because my body won’t let me, therefore in my mind I am lazy, last year I was even called lazy by someone because I just couldn’t show up how I normally did. I can’t even force myself and tell myself to suck it up buttercup. Its enough sometimes just getting out of bed, and at least now I can shower and dress myself without help.

I ask, is this what God wants? Is this what Jesus died for? For me to be so burnt out my body won’t function as it used to all before I am even 40. Its storing fat because it thinks something terrible is happening, and the worst thing to happen in my most recent generational DNA is starving in world war 2, so its storing “just in case”. And of course its attacking its self or rather my immune system is attacking me, because its got its self in such a stress frenzied tiz was it can’t turn off.

And no ladies and gents this is not a case of “eat less and exercise more” as our doctors have so badly dished out over the years, because guess what any thought of going on a diet, or changing what I eat and my body goes into a stressed frenzy releasing more cortisol and making everything worse, including making me gain more weight.

Nope we need a new approach my generation of women are struggling and if we don’t do something every generation after us will get worse, our daughters and grand daughters need us to work out how to put our own oxygen mask on before others.

So what do we need to do?

Good question, because each of us have individual needs, we have our individual back stories, our current stories and if we don’t change something now, our back story will keep chasing us into the future, making things worse.

For me when I first believed in Jesus, I realised there are 2 paths I could go down. Number 1 is the one I had been on since I was about 12 because I had decided to reject the offer of asking Jesus into my life which was not going well, and I can actually track back to that time and through my teens where the enemy of our souls (satan) actually tried to destroy me in multiple ways. ( a blog for another time).

At the point I choose to ask Jesus in to help me in 2016 I was in agony every day and it hadn’t been long since I had gotten off crutches which I had been on since I was 5 months pregnant, due to an injury I had at 14 rearing its ugly head after I injured myself again out farming whilst pregnant. I was having to deal with loosing everything I had held dear up to that point. My physical health I had taken for granted, my can do attitude because my mental and emotional health went down the toilet, and my ability to go back on the farm to work or indeed go out to work had gone. Path 1 was deeming to be not a good choice based on the decisions I had made through my teens to constantly punish and berate myself because I wasn’t perfect or could never be perfect. Perfectionism kills dreams.

So what was path 2, path 2 was the option I never knew I had until I found Jesus. It is the narrow path and not necessarily easier but it yields better results for my health and my family in the long run, and sadly in many churches this isn’t being taught.

The bible calls it the Highway to Holiness which I can assure you is much better than the highway to hell I was on.

To get on the highway to holiness its been a journey of realising:

1 I can actually hear from God direct from heaven (so can you I am not special)

2 Once you hear from God you can ask him to speak louder because it’s noisy down here, and you can start to do what you feel directed to do. (This can take time and a lot of trial and error but God is gracious to us blundering humans, if we make a mistake he picks us up brushes us off and sets us on our way again).

3 Start choosing to believe that God wants and knows what is best for us ( I thought I knew what was best for me, but that’s what got me into trouble in the first place) This is also different from what our parents or anyone else who has spoken into our lives can think is best for us, because humans are all falling short when it comes to doing what is right.

You see once you realise there is a different way you could be living your life its hard to un see it, and its what I’ve been working on ever since I realised its even a thing, because lets face it the world is messy right now and we don’t know who or what to believe anymore, but I implore you to believe this; God loves you, and He sent His Son Jesus so that we can be saved and have a fruitful life.

The whole reason Jesus came, was to give us a 3rd option if you think you only have 2. It hasn’t been the journey I imagined at all, and its been really hard at times especially overcoming fear but its been far better than anything I could have come up with, blessings and miracles have abounded, and I know in time it will bare good fruit, where I can get back helping others because I have worked out how to look after myself first.

In the mean time your call to action is get right with God, ask Jesus to give you His options for your life, to step in and help you be a good mum, or manage your time better, or bring you more finances, its worth it I promise.