My Mission Field

Sunday in church, our pastor did an amazing sermon which was bookended by people talking about their respective mission work. Going to a Baptist church, which is not how I grew up, you realize that they have a huge emphasis on mission work, which is really cool to me. Although I would love to some day take a mission trip or two, what I have realized in the past week is that at this stage in my life, my home is my mission field.

I was feeling totally overwhelmed and stressed last week and I couldn't really put my thumb on why. Then as I was doing my Bible Study, God revealed to me that my job is my home. Not only taking care of my husband and kids, but also the material home. It is such a huge relief to have the burden of the unknown lifted and now I at least know what my focus needs to be, now it is just how to do it.

I realized that often times, I give my best at work, and not at home. Although it is very important for me to do well at work, it shouldn't be my absolute best. Elizabeth George, the author, talks about good, better, best and how sometimes you have to sacrifice a good, for a best. I am not saying that I am going to totally neglect my job responsibilities for my home life, because right now, my job is supporting (at least steadily) my family financially and it would be irresponsible to be negligent right now. I just need to put my best foot forward at home and have all of my other responsibilities fall in line. One thing that God has really stressed to me lately is getting up before my family so that I have that quiet time. Although my alarm usually goes off before everyone else is supposed to get up, I haven't been good about actually following through and then before I know it, BG is up doing his Bible study and every noise he makes distracts me, or Linus starts crying and needs to be fed, or SD is shaking her door handle indicating that she is also ready to get up.

So in preparation for all this, I spent the better part of this weekend planning for how this is going to look in my life. The plan is to get all planned up and then execute starting in December, which gives me a month dry run before I can put it in to place as a New Year's Resolution!