Hurry Up, Hurry Up, Hurry Up!

If you are a woman, you understand the phrase above. No explanation needed. Our life seems to be events – not everyday living. Sometimes I feel our lives are the perpetual hamster wheel.

We start planning for Christmas in July, and then we move right into Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then the big day. In January we start all over again for the next year. Planning, decorating and cooking, making sure that everything is picture perfect.

Do you sometimes want to yell STOP the world I want to get off? I know I do. I specifically remember this feeling as a young mother. I was a single mom and raising my two daughters, working a full time job, involved in church, the girls had dance or soccer or the activity they were involved in that season. Of course the everyday drudgery of cleaning house, laundry always was there waiting for me at 10 o’clock at night when I just wanted to sink into bed. What if you are an overachiever, well there is another level to your work because you have to do more than the rest of your peers to get the accolades of how wonderful everything is. Most of which are self-inflicted “have too”.

I used to do crazy stuff, make lasagna for the office, bake homemade bread (no not a bread machine), cookies, and muffins and on and on. Why? Well there isn’t anything wrong with any of these things, and I really enjoyed doing them for other people, that's just who I am. 

I feel like we have all gone into party mode. Party mode is fun for most of us. We like having parties, giving parties and going to parties. But real life is not a party. Learning to live everyday life, doing your chores and being proud of a job well done and satisfied is gone away. It saddens me. 

Young mothers today, I feel for you. You now have the internet with Facebook and Pinterest that you get to compare yourselves to each other. Oh she did this and that with her children; I should do more with mine. This mindset will wear you out and make you unhappy. Look to your children and families and everyday things to help make your life happy and substantial.

Now that I am getting older my body makes me stop when I am doing too much. I wake up with a list of things to do for the day but can only get through two thirds of it. Then the body says stop. Getting older has its privileges. One of them is saying I just can’t do that right now. 

But – sometimes even we older overachievers don’t know when to stop and say no. Easter is around the corner and my hamster wheel is waiting for me, I must go now. I need to decorate my fire place like a picture I saw on Pinterest and make the special cookies, rice crispy treats and flower decorations.

Creating Pleasures

by Lillian Humphries

I love hosting a good party. Sometimes I like just to through a few things together and hope for the best, but sometimes I love to really put on the Ritz. This past couple of weeks I was planning for Easter dinner at our house. I searched Pinterest for all the cute decorations and tasty treats that the grand children would enjoy. I had such fun preparing everything. The only problem with having a picture in your mind is sometimes it does not translate to my hands during the creation time. However, this year I was successful. There was only one fail and that was the big white cardboard Easter egg that I put a ribbon on. I didn’t buy the wire ribbon and the bow just laid there like a wet noodle.

I made rice crispy treats in pastels, layered and cut then placed on lollipop sticks wrapped with cellophane and tied with a bow. Easter bark filled with chocolate and candies, Cheetos in cake

decorating bags that looked like carrots and egg shaped sugar cookies decorated so precise that Martha Stewart would have been proud of me. Homemade yeast rolls that were the bomb and topped it off with butter piped into little swirls. Did I go over the top, you bet I did.

All that was wonderful and I loved the faces of my family as I showed off my talents waiting for the accolade’s that would follow, maybe not one of my most humble moments.

There was a lot of energy put into the preparation of the event. In the evenings I was exhausted from all the planning and creating. I wonder how God felt about creating the universe and all that is in it. How excited He must have been of all His creations. So proud and pleased. The beauty across the universe, the trees, flowers, animals and then saved the best for last – humans.

My mind can’t comprehend anything near that grand. The pleasure our Father must have felt in the beginning surely was overwhelming.

Do you give our Father the accolades that you do others? Do praise Him and thank Him for the beauty all around us? Spring time is a wonderful time of year to see His beauty unfold. Praise and thank God today.