Grace in Daily Life,  Redemptive Relationships

Uncharitable Presumptions & Being Really, Really TIRED

Today would have been a very easy day to think some extremely uncharitable presumptions about me. I didn’t make it home from my event until midnight (which was around 1AM for my body because of the time zone differentials.

Getting ready for church felt like I was lifting arms and legs made of 300 pounds of concrete. But I did it—I was eager to be at corporate worship and happy to be together as a family. Still. If you were one of the 500 people past whom I walked without a cheerfully greeting? (I tried! Believe me, I tried! But it got to the point where a migraine started in and I could barely keep my body in an upright position, more or less make small talk.) … Well. It would’ve been very easy to think:

“Boy! That Tara sure is rude.”
“Gee. She didn’t even greet me. Guess she doesn’t like me very much.”
“Tara is a terrible church member! She never sacrifices for others. I bet she doesn’t care about me at all.”

When, in actuality, a charitable presumption, especially if you know what’s been happening in the last month of my life, might have sounded more like this:

“Man. Tara is FRIED. Maybe we should take the girls for them for a couple of hours so that they can just go home and get some REST.”

And that is exactly what our friends did.

Nice people, those church friends. Their lives are filled to overflowing too, and yet they grabbed Ella’s car seat and popped it into their car like it was nothin’. And then they lavished their love on our girls so that I could go home, climb into bed, and once the wave of utter exhaustion passed, actually TALK with Fred about everything that happened at the Fear Not retreat.

Grace grace grace. I am a blessed woman.

 And I’m working REALLY hard to try to get back onto some semblance of a normal schedule—but normal in that, “going to be on East Coast Time again Thursday-Saturday” sort of way. Wow. It’s going to be great when this month is a happy, blessed memory.

I love doing what I do. Our family CHOSE to accept these opportunities to serve. But now, knowing what my 41-year-old body can handle, I don’t think we would pile three events (Europe, Midwest, East Coast) back to back to back again. Apparently, I’m just a little too weak to handle it all.)

But in my weakness, God is strong! And tomorrow is a domestic diva day—homeschooling, maybe a little cleaning, lots of cuddles and reading, and hey! I even have a plan for dinner. OK. FRED has a plan for dinner, but I’m going to execute it. (Notice I said execute IT, not execute PEOPLE with my lousy cooking. 🙂 This is a fail-safe-even-I-can-do-it breaded pork chop meal. Nummmy!)

Hope your Sabbath was restful—
And that a friend reached out with care and help, rather than criticism, distance, and lovelessness.

This life is hard enough! We dont need to be mean to each other along the way, too, do we?

Sending my care,
Tara B.

[A re-post from 2011] 

Comments Off on Uncharitable Presumptions & Being Really, Really TIRED