Prioritization ⋆ A Delightful Glow

Priorities and Prioritization.

Big words. {I had to spell check.}

With a lot behind and intertwined in them.

Prioritizing can sometimes feel like an impossible, ever changing juggling game to me.

Good things are good. There are a lot of good things. There are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of places that need help. People that need help and care and love. There are always things that need done and the everyday cycle of daily life and tasks.

Good things are good. But good things aren’t always best. And someone else’s to-do’s and lists aren’t going to mirror mine at all. So, it’s not as simple as just reading the book or copying off the check list. I like to read inspirational books. They inspire, ya know? But there’s still the sorting and praying and figuring out what works for me and my family.

There’s the mundane and the daily. The have-to’s. The need-to’s. The want-to’s. The ignore pile. The pull-the-comforter-over-my-head days.

And do too often the people I love most end up getting shorted?

Lots of questions. Lots of thoughts. Not so many answers.

And then there’s the continual change in the cycles of life. Just when I think I’m used to one or in a groove, we bounce over the bump and there is change waiting at the corner. Even something as simple as the season changing and it’s time for farmwork or for end of the year paperwork or back to our school schedule.

And the forgetting. Forgetting that no, I can’t help everyone. I can’t do every single thing I think of. But I can do a kindness here. I can smile. And it matters to the one you touch, even if you feel like that for every one, there are two dozen more.

And why do I think that a list of twenty things that should all be priorities all on the same day, is a good idea? It’s impossible.

There’s LIFE priorities and there’s DAILY priorities.

My daily priorities are going to keep changing and changing.

The priorities that line up in the Life column aren’t going to change so much and they’re going to have a years-in-the-making quality and far reaching effects. They’re going to be influenced in different ways that the daily things.

I’m not going to always get it right, but maybe part of the process is simply the growing and changing that life brings and taking time to contemplate every so often and realize there will always be choices waiting for my decision. Always.

And there are things happening today that I can never get back tomorrow.

Every tomorrow that comes my way and becomes today, holds moments that will only happen now.

God has granted me each precious moment.

And when these things, these priorities, are all popping up their heads like an ever changing row of jack-in-the-boxes, perhaps pausing to pray and to give thanks and stepping closer to my Father’s embrace will stablish me and settle me for each step I take and I can boldly just “do the next thing”, no matter how large or how small.

Colossians 2:6-7

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

I love to compare versions of God’s word. It just opens it up and opens it up. Our God is so amazing. My heart just overflows at times. I’m far from having all the answers I’d like to have, but He is always there for me to pour my heart out to. And I think God is more about dependence than He is about my having all the answers. For then I seek to do it all my own and I put that old man back on all too easy.

As my devotional, Jesus Calling, recently reminded me, “Refuse to Worry!” “The best defense is continual communication with me, richly seasoned with thanksgiving.” “Live close to me! Together we can keep the wolves of worry at bay.”