SO073: Living From a State of Rest

What this episode covers

Season 12: Finding Rest as a Homeschool Mom This season of the Simplified Organization Audio Blog is excerpts from an hour-long live chat all about resting as a homeschool mom. Find the link below to access the replay in its entirety! Decision fatigue is super real, and it’s not just our kids pestering that puts us over the edge, it’s ourselves also. Our own minds are always going, going, going. And that’s one reason why we’re brain dumping, we’re getting it out of our heads so that our own head is not pestering us. So, we have to find ways because, I think, we also might find a way to arrange for the kids to give us 30 minutes of not talking to us and then we find that didn’t help as much as I thought it would because the distraction mode is still here. Even if we turn the phone off, even if we send the kids away, then we find the problem’s still here. Brain dump, brain dump, brain dump, organization can bring more peace. A lot of the ways you see organization on Pinterest or that kind of thing where it means label makers and matching containers and a perfect cleaning schedule where you take all the buckets out and wipe down the inside of the cabinet every month that increases our feelings of obligation and increases our feelings of inadequacy – like, that’s just not going to work in my life, what do I do now because I’m incompetent on so many levels? When this is the problem, when it’s in our heads, it’s one of three things (and these are the last three things on my list I was telling you about). We need peace from three things. So this is our own internal problems that are giving us unrest. One is anxiety, and I feel completely unable to really deeply address that one because I know so many people struggle with anxiety as a real, deep-seated, maybe even chemical issue, but anxiety is going to steal your peace and steal your rest. It makes rest impossible so we have to address it, we can’t just live with it, we have to address it. Isaiah 40 for anxiety, Philippians 4. Anxiety is actually a sin and we need to repent and then we need to rejoice and then we need to do it over and over again. So, sometimes we think that because if we keep doing it then I’m either off the hook or I’m a lost case but it’s just something that we have to keep doing. And then the peace of God is given to us when we pray with thanksgiving. Like, actually repenting instead of just feeling bad. Sometimes just feeling bad is us laying ourselves off the hook, but actually calling it a sin, asking God to help us, and Philippians 4 says “with gratitude,” and that doesn’t mean so I’m thankful for fluffy kittens and blue skies, it’s be grateful in the situation that you’re in because you can always be thankful for Jesus, right? So, be thankful even within the situation where you are, not for things outside your situation, but for inside your situation, prayer, with thanksgiving, making your requests know then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. It’s a pretty clear verse, and we can keep coming back to it. That’s why it’s repent, rejoice, repeat. It’s not a once and done thing and now we’re never going to have this problem again. It’s going to keep being an ongoing problem but every time it is it’s like, ‘oh, I know what to do’ and it’s that knowing what to do that brings us rest. So, it’s not even about an escape from it or solving it, it’s knowing what to do that brings the peace. Well, God brings the peace but that’s a big part of it. OK, but the two big ones … that one’s like it’s own big huge category … and the two every day peace stealers and unrest creators are decision fatigue and the feeling of vague obligation. There are so many things I should be doing I don’t even know what they all are. How many people have ever felt like that? I have so many things I don’t even know what they all are, vague obligation.

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