Logs vs Specks

It is funny how stress sneaks up on you. You think you are coping just fine with everything that has been tossed at you, only to find some small matter is your undoing.

I've noticed this time, before the undoing has happened, that stress has been building in our lives. Tim is so very busy with work right now, clients are starting to get mad, but each week he finds he is called to run errands, meet people for lunch and small things that seem to eat away at his productive time. Then there are the conferences, that require a day to get there 3 days in between and a day to get home. Tim is stressed, and as a wife I am desperate to step in and help. Can I answer emails? I need to do something- and yet there is little practical I can do to help him.

I am stressed too. Business is starting to slow down as it often does in the spring, and I need to find a way to keep things moving, made all the more difficult by and unreachable manager and a slowing economic trend. I am stressed about the kids school situation next year. I am stressed about being left at home for what will amount to a week a month without a husband around. I've become very inwardly focused, trying to cope with my own life.

When you are very stressed out, you tend to focus so much on yourself and you forget what is happening in everyones lives. You seem to forget that everyone has things at any time they are struggling to work through. Getting your head stuck in the sand and bemoaning your fate seems natural, normal and necessary. No one can have it as hard as you.

Our associate pastor preached a sermon about dealing with the log in your own eye before the speck in your neighbours. You know when you hear the beginning of a sermon and all the air whooshes out of you, and you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, like uh oh? I had that, but the funny thing is I didn't know why. I knew I needed to hear this now, but didn't know how it was applicable right at that moment.

I think I may have figured it out. I haven't been dealing with the stress in my own life very well right now. It took one very hurtful event to show me this. And so, while it is tempting to criticize the stress that caused this hurt, I need to check the log in my own eye first, and see how I have been blinded by what is happening around me right now.

It has been a hard lesson, and I am still licking my wounds, but God is sovereign , gracious and works all things for good. That is my comfort. I know, if I let Him, He will use this to His glory, and that, really, is all that matters.