Monday, January 30, 2012

When Pigs Fly

It was just one more thing for me to do. "I trust you can manage this." The words burned in my ears but in my head...it was a whole different thing.

When pigs fly, I thought. Yep. When little piggies fly.

My friend sent me a note today that said she'd ended up overnight in the hospital thinking she was having a heart attack. It ended up being stress.

"Oh my gosh," I shouted. And I fired her a less than stressful email about why she hadn't contacted me and just how I could guide her through stress. After all, I am the queen of stress. Who better to instruct her, right?

I looked across my desk and realized that over the last week I'd worked 26 hours at my "real" part-time job, and  66 hours on the tasks involved in our ministry. Who was I to talk about stress? Two years ago, I found myself losing my hair because of stress.

I have writing I want to do. This is the gift God gave me; the ability to write. And though the 66 hours I spent in the ministry was all pertaining to writing; not one word was for the things God has assigned me to write. Oddly enough, I heard a whisper.

"When pigs fly? Right Cin?"

So today, I go back to the path I learned and practice saying no to some of the things others freely dump onto my plate. I have a calling and though God uses me through His work in the ministry, he has also given me a specific task to write.

I know you're probably just like me, aren't you? Snowed under. Covered in a pile of papers chin deep? I love what I do. I love every part of what I do but today, I'm tired. And a friend just dumped another huge pile on top of me. So tomorrow (because today has already passed), I'm making myself invisible on email and I'm pulling out the writing work God has assigned me. I've learned, when I do the work I'm assigned, the stress slips away because I'm lost in the joy of the blessing.

Yeah...I heard you God. I heard your whisper. I'll do what you ask and truthfully, I look forward to it. I trust in you to take the stress, give me the organization I need to get through and the strength to say no. Oh, and before You say, "When pigs fly." I find it necessary to remind you, I found a football and I'm a pretty good punter.

I rolled the football between my hands, dropped it, then kicked. "Yep," I said. "When pigs fly. And there she blows!"