Don’t Look at the Clouds… & UK Fellowship Friday

I was up in the night several times from 4am onwards with little ones. Just as I was thinking I might get a small amount of sleep, another one woke up crying! So I got up feeling tired, wanting to go back to bed, struggling to keep my eyes open.

I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to get through today?’. It was our first day back at school after the Christmas holidays. The kids were grumbling and my mind was complaining.

Then my mind went back to Ann Voskamp’s reminder about ‘doing the next thing’, where she refers to Elisabeth Elliot, whose missionary husband became a martyr when he was killed on the mission field. Elisabeth Elliot said this:

So I tried to change my focus. Instead of wondering how I was going to get through the day, and whether I should just drop school for the day and try to rest, I thought, ‘Let’s just do the dishes right now and not think ahead more than that.’ I turned some worship music on – Hope’s choice since she already had said, ‘I’m not having a good day’! And just did the dishes.

It really did help an awful lot, and it reminded me of a verse I read recently which said,

I think a lot of our troubles come from looking at the clouds. They might not actually be dropping rain on us, but we look at them and think ‘Rain is coming, is it worth starting if it’s going to rain? I might get wet, I might have to stop, maybe I just shouldn’t start…’

We focus on the negative thoughts, on what people think about us, on how bad we feel, whereas often we just need to forget the thoughts, feelings, discouragements and excuses and just do the next thing and get on with our responsibilities. Often when we do that we feel better as a result.

Matthew Henry says, ‘The discouragements we meet with in these duties are but as winds and clouds, which will do us no harm, and which those that put on a little courage and resolution will despise and easily break through.’

The outcome of the day was that by the time lunchtime came I felt an awful lot better, and we did manage to do school and everything else that was important. So it wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the beginning of the day!

Linking up with Bragging on God Friday, Spiritual Sundays (button on the sidebar)

UK Fellowship Friday Blog Hop

I would love you to link up if you have recently written a post about your faith that might encourage other Christians – for example a testimony, reflection or challenge. The only other requirement is that you live in the UK. Please link to the specific post you’ve written, then it will help people to find it.

If you join below, it would be good if you could link to this post in a text-link on your blog so your readers can find the other blogs in the blog hop. I am planning to try and make a button at some point, when I can find the time to figure it out!