Acknowledging Your Own Needs: Wisdom for the Overwhelmed Mom

Transcript

Marker 2

Marker 4

Audrey 1:13

Hello and welcome back to Grace for My Home, Audrey McCracken. And it is such a pleasure to be back with you again this week. I hope that you're doing well. We are doing great. Tonight we have the last home soccer game of the year, which is always bittersweet, right? I get some nights back, but my son is going to miss playing soccer and I'm going to miss watching him. We also have a graduation coming up. My middle son, Luke, will graduate high school, which is just blows my mind. And then we're going into summer. And summer, we're going to do a vacation somehow. I don't know when, how we're going to align all the planets and the moon and stars together. All my boys have something right now. My husband has some trips for work, but we are going to, if it's just a long weekend, we're going to do something together because my little nest is breaking up. Everybody is going their separate ways. My oldest son David, he's in college and he's been commuting back and forth. But next year he wants to stay on campus. And I completely understand and support that. But my mama heart, it's it's not easy, guys. And you who have been through that, I'm sure you completely understand. But it's good. I think it's been a good introduction for him this year, and he's kind of met some friends, and so it'll be a good experience for him. Some other news is I am stepping back from the coffee shop. For you who are regular listeners and you've been listening for some time, you have heard me talk about the coffee shop that I run for our church. It's called Awaken Coffee Bar and it's in Mullins, South Carolina. We started that about three years ago. We officially opened in June of 2023. And I have, I feel like it's time for me to move on. I love the coffee shop. I never thought I could do something like that. It was it was a stretch for me, but I learned so much. But my heart truly is ministry. That is my heart. And I want to be available to do more of that. I want to be able to work with more people and focus on those things. So I am backing up, teaching other people to do what I do, and I'm gonna miss it. I'm really gonna miss it, and I love it, and I want it to flourish and do well, but I just feel like God's calling me into a new season, something new. Today I want to continue what we were discussing last week. Last week we talked about pouring from an empty cup and how you really can't do that if you're gonna sustain, if you're gonna be around for the long haul, and if you're gonna love your family well. You have to fill up so that you have something to pour out. And today I'm gonna continue with that. And I want to talk with you today about needs. We all have them. We all have needs, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we want to believe it or not. Sometimes we want to pretend we don't, you know, we can just do whatever we need to do. We don't have to think about us and what we need. You know, we're just looking to make sure everybody else has their needs met. As Christian moms, as Christian women, that's often our that's often the way we we operate. But you can't operate like that forever. Ask me how I know. When we do, eventually it catches up with us, and we don't have anything else to give. And often that shows up with resentment and anger, or you might snap, or your body may start shutting down on you. Your body may, like me, my body just said, nope, I'm not doing this anymore. And I I was mad at my body because I thought I'm too young to be going through these things, but I wasn't giving my body what it needed to function properly, you know. And and guys, I I love God, I believe God does miracles. Don't get me wrong, but he also gives us things to take care of. And when we don't take care of what he's given us, then no wonder we don't have the things that that we need when we need them. And let me let me explain that a little bit. God created us with needs. We are living, breathing organisms. And you know, physically we have needs. We need water, we need food, we need sleep, we need rest, we need shelter, we need clothes. Those are things that that we need to survive physically, but we have so many more needs emotionally. We need people. God created us to be in community with people. We need other people. We have emotional needs. We need to be loved, we need to be appreciated, we need to feel like we have a purpose, we need to feel like we are important to those around us, that we're doing what we were created to do. We need a sense of family and friendship. We need security and stability. Those are all needs. Some of those needs we feel stronger than others, just depending on the season of life we're in, the experiences we've had in the past, the way we've grown up, just our personalities. Some of us are just some of those needs are more important to us than others, but they're all still needs. And we have spiritual need. That's what differentiates us from the animal kingdom. We are not advanced animals, animals that have gone through advanced evolution. That's not what we are. We are created in the image of God, and we have a spirit, a spirit that needs to commune with God. It is a fundamental need that we as Christians have, and we we must get that need met. And the only place to get that need met is with God. And so we have these needs, and we need to think about these needs. And the Lord, when he started showing me this, when he started showing me basically that I'm not superwoman and that he didn't create me to be superwoman and he doesn't expect me to be that superwoman that I was trying to be, then it started me on this journey to figure out how to get my needs met in the midst of all of the chaos that felt like my life. I just felt like that was that was selfish for me to be thinking about what I needed and you know what I wanted. I got to a point that I didn't even really know what I wanted. I just knew I wasn't happy. I don't know if you've ever been there. I couldn't tell you why I wasn't happy. I couldn't put my finger on, you know, why I wasn't satisfied, but I just I wasn't. And I didn't even, because I had never stopped to think about what I wanted or what I needed. It was just all about making sure everyone else was taken care of. When the Lord started showing me these things, I became curious and I started looking for information. I started praying, I started listening to other women who had more wisdom than me in this area. And I love podcasts. I don't just produce a podcast, I listen to podcasts. And, you know, it depending on the mood I'm in, I have different podcasts for every mood and every topic that I'm interested in. But one particular day I was looking for something and I ran upon this podcast. It was a Christian woman, and and she was talking about needs and God supplying your needs. And I thought, well, great, I'll I'll listen to this. And I wish I could say that I agreed with her, but it it was so different than what God was showing me. Now, maybe for her, that was the season of life she was in, and that's how, you know, God got her through that. God can, you know, He He knows all of our needs, He knows our situations and our circumstances. But one of the things that she said on that podcast that that I really could not, I couldn't agree with, at least not in my life, was that we don't need to think about our needs. You know, God has supplied all of our needs, and we don't need to be thinking about it. You know, just go do what he's called you to do and don't think about, you know, what you need. Don't be thinking about you all the time. And that sounds spiritual, but when I lived that way and I just made sure everybody else was taken care of, I got to a point that I I didn't care if everybody else was taken care of. I was so burned out and resentful for those people that I was supposed to be loving. And I relate it to this, okay? I relate it this way. If God gave you a hundred thousand dollars, say by a miracle, something happened, and you found yourself with an extra hundred thousand dollars. If you don't make a plan for that money, okay, if you don't just ask the Lord, what do I do with this money? Maybe you pay off debt, maybe there's someone who you love who you know there's a need and you're glad to be able to meet that need. Maybe maybe you pay for your kids' college. I don't know. But if unless you make a plan for that money, it will be gone before you know it. Because people, if they hear you've got money, they'll ask you for money. And being the kind of person you are, you want to give, right? Well, that's nothing wrong with giving. God loves a cheerful giver. But if you don't make a plan, you'll find yourself a year, two years down the road, wondering what happened to that money. And see, God gives us things all the time. He gives us resources, and we have to make a plan with what we're gonna do with those resources. He gives us time, he gives us money, he gives us energy, he gives us people, you know, people in our lives. And these are all gifts, and we have to decide how we're gonna manage those things, how we're going to take care of those things. We have to have a plan for those things. Or we'll look back and think, what happened to all my time? Or what happened to all my energy? Now, granted, some of us are in different seasons, and some of us have more money than others, some of us have less energy than others. You know, we all have a puzzle. God has given us all a puzzle, but we have to stop and look at what we have right now, where we are, and how are we going to manage what God has given us in this season? And he has given us the grace to do that. You know, isn't that awesome? He has he's not just thrown us out there and said, Hope you make it. He is saying, Here you are, here are the things I've given you. Now go and do well. You know, make a plan. You know, I think about creation. When God created the earth, don't you know he had a plan? He didn't just go out there and throw some stars out or, you know, say, I think I'll make people, or, you know, I think I'll make the ocean. He had a plan. Each day was a different phase of his plan. And we are created in his image, and we too can make a plan. Now it will never be perfect or foolproof. You know, we're not, we're never gonna foolproof our life and make it so that our life is easy. Life is hard. But knowing that life is hard, but that we can still manage it, that gives us hope. We are going to go through very difficult seasons when we're gonna have to go to God and say, God, I can't do this. I don't have what this takes, I don't have the money this takes, I don't have the energy this takes, I don't have the time, I don't have the wisdom, I don't have what it takes. I need you to fill in the gaps. And God, God answers those prayers. But we don't have to constantly live in a state of chaos. I remember when I was going to the gynecologist before I had my first child, and I was in the waiting room and I was listening to this other conversation. I wasn't trying to, I couldn't help it. They were right behind me, and and I couldn't help but hear. But this this young girl was talking to her friend or whoever she knew in the in the waiting room, and she was asking her, her friend was asking her, How is it going since the baby came? And she said, Well, the baby has colic, and I haven't slept in months. And she said, It's it's it's harder than I thought it would be. She said, But my grandmother came over two nights ago and told me just to go to bed, and she stayed up with the baby all night long, and she she rocked the baby and held the baby and sang to the baby all night long. And I got the best rest. She said, I woke up and things just were were better. And she said, I told my grandmama, grandma, I didn't know it was gonna be this way, I didn't know it was gonna be this hard. And her grandmother said to her, Honey, it's just a season, it will get better, but babies are a lot of work, and I can't tell you how many times when my children were young and we had sleepless nights, and we had times when it just felt like I cannot get out of this bed, but I had to get out of the bed. And I I can't tell you how many times I thought about that conversation, and I thought that that woman has no idea how much her story helped me because I would I would remind myself that grandmother's wisdom, this is a season, it will not always be like this. Babies are a lot of work, children are a lot of work, and you you just you get through it. So I know that there are times in your life when it seems like the needs that you have are not get gonna get met. You know, you need sleep, but when you're up all night with a colicky baby for weeks on for weeks on end, that is that can make you angry, just somebody telling you you need sleep. Well, yes, I know I need sleep, but I can't get sleep. But I want to tell you that it is a season, and I believe that there is a special grace on us when we go through seasons like that. And God holds our hands through them, he gives us wisdom in it, he walks with us. You know, he never leaves us, he never forsakes us, he's with us in the trial, in the hard time. He is forming our character, but that is not where we are always going to live. Years after that, as I was in the thick of it, and I was homeschooling my children, and I was, you know, with my husband in ministry and trying to just do life. I remember the Lord saying to me, and one pointed moment when I actually had ears to hear, when I slowed down enough to listen, he said, Audrey, your life is not an emergency. And I thought, yeah, it is. Every day it feels like an emergency. I'm on survival mode every day. I'm just trying to make it. And it was like the Lord was saying, I didn't call you to live every day in emergency mode. There are seasons, there are times when you just got to get it done. You can't think about, you know, everything that that you need. You have to just get it done. But that can't be your normal mode. You can't sustain living like that all the time. Take God's grace for when things are crazy, for when seasons are pressing, for when there are things that happen unexpectedly and you just got to get through them. But let the Lord help you come back to a place of peace, a place of rest. And that is part of maturing, that is part of growing up in God, is learning there are some things we do not have control over, but there are many things that we do. And it was only as I learned that God expected me to acknowledge and take responsibility for getting my needs met that I started feeling like I had some control in my life and that my life was not an emergency. Okay, think think of your children. Take your children as an example. They are growing in maturity and in responsibility. When an infant is born, that infant cannot feed itself. That baby can cry and let you know that it's hungry, but there's absolutely nothing that child can do to help feed itself. That child will die if someone does not take the responsibility of feeding it. Now, as that child grows, little by little they become more independent, more able to feed themselves. And often it's really messy, right? I mean, my boys, they wanted to feed themselves way before they actually had the motor skills to do so. But we let them try, we let them do what they could. As they got bigger, they could make a sandwich, they could heat up chicken nuggets, they wanted to do those things because part of growing up is you want to take responsibility and do things for yourself. So they had a need to eat, they had a need for good food, and you had a need for nutrition. And as their mom, I took care of them. I made sure that that need was met. But as they grew, they became more and more responsible for those needs. And I became less responsible for those needs. My middle son Luke, he got a job a few months back at a fast food restaurant. It's not a chain, it's a local place near us that's been open for 40, 50 years, and he is learning to cook. Last night he brought home chicken fingers and fried chicken that he made. A few weeks back, he wanted to grill out for us. He wanted to grill hamburgers because the guy that he works for, his boss, who has been doing this for 30 years, showed him how to grill hamburgers and he wanted to share that with us. So he was so proud of that. He made the whole family hamburgers and they were delicious. But the point is, my my children are not going to starve. If if I never cook for them again, they know how to take care of themselves, Dale. Now I enjoy cooking for them, it's not a chore to me, but they have matured, and that's how we mature in God, little by little. We start seeing our needs and acknowledging our needs and taking responsibility for getting those needs met. In the Sermon on the Mount, we can read it in Matthew 6, 25 through 34. Jesus talks about worry, and he says, don't worry about your life. Don't worry about what you're going to eat or drink or about your body, what you're going to wear, because your life is more than food and your body is more than clothes. And as a Christian woman, especially a mom, sometimes that scripture has just felt like a thorn in my side. So much of what I do is centered around not just what I'm going to eat, but what are we going to eat? And not just what am I going to wear, but what are we going to wear? And when I read that scripture, I'm like, well, somebody's got to think about it. Somebody has to plan it. And over the years, the Lord has shown me, yes, think about it, plan it, but don't worry about it. See, when you have a plan, it helps to relieve the worry. See, when I have a good plan, it helps me not to worry. And we're not all in the same situation. God's not asked the same of all of us. I only had three children. Now I had three children within four or five years of each other. And to me it was hard. I wasn't prepared for motherhood. I didn't understand how much work it was, how much it was going to demand of me physically and mentally and emotionally. But God's grace was enough. I know women who have many, many more children than I do, and they have a different, a different circumstance. They have a different scenario. God's grace is different on their life because their needs are different. I can't tell that woman how to plan her home. I can't tell her what will work for her and what won't because I don't know. But I do know that God is faithful in all situations and circumstances. And I do know that he promised that if we lack wisdom, that all we had to do was ask and he would give it. And so that's how I live, and that's how I encourage you to live. God, give me wisdom in this circumstance. God, show me how to manage what you've given me. Show me how to manage the time, the money, the energy that you've given me, the home, the job. Show me how to take care of these things because you've given them to me and I want to use them wisely. I want to be a good steward. I want to multiply what you've given me so that I can hear those words. Well done, good and faithful servant. You know, our lives matter. The people that you serve and you love, it matters. And so that's why you have to take care of yourself because you are not limitless. You are not superwoman. You have got to get a wise plan so that you can sustain. And God will give you wisdom for your season. He will give you grace for your season. Guys, I believe in miracles. There were days that I needed a miracle to get out of bed. I mean, that's how tired I was. I mean, to me, it was a miracle to get through the end of the day without losing my temper. I mean, I was thankful at the end of that day. I'm like, this is a success. Yes, maybe the house looks like a tornado went through it, but I got through it without losing my cool. And so that was a success. You measure your successes different in different seasons. And one of my biggest needs was time with Jesus. When I could spend real time with Jesus, and I mean real time as in I'm talking to him and he's talking to me, I can stop long enough to actually read a verse and think about it and meditate on it. That's a success, okay, for me spiritually. But when I had that time with Jesus, then my time with my family and others was much better. But I didn't have the time I had BC, which is before children. I didn't have that time anymore. I had little pockets. And so when I felt like I have no time for Jesus, I have no time to spend in the Word, I have no time to pray. So why even try? Because I get frustrated when I get interrupted. I enjoyed long devotions and time when I could just pray and think and write and journal. I didn't have that anymore when the when the kids started running around and knocking on the door and getting up at the crack of dawn with me. I I was frustrated because that was a need of mine. Spending time with Jesus was a need for me. And I felt like this, I'm never going to get this need met. And so the Lord started giving me wisdom. He said, Fill the pockets, Audrey. And I said, What do you mean, Lord? What do you mean, pockets? He said, There's little pockets of time, but they didn't feel like they were enough. But it's what I had. See, if you can't give God what you want, give him what you have. And so I started filling the pockets with Jesus. And that was the times when I would take them outside and let them run wild while I sat in a lawn chair with my Bible. Now it I rarely had more than 10, 15 minutes before somebody needed me or somebody was hurt, or two people were fighting and I had to break that up, but that's okay. You know, when I was working, that pocket was my lunch break. During my lunch break, I would run around and try to do my errands. And then if I had just 15 minutes uninterrupted, that was a success. That was the pocket. Another pocket for me was the shower. Silly as it may seem, I would get in the shower and I would pray. It was funny, my husband asked me one time, why do you take such long showers? Like you're in there forever. We're not, we don't have any hot water. And I said, Well, that's the only place where I can go and people aren't knocking on the door. People don't need me. I can pray. That's my quiet time. And was it ideal? No. I like to sit in my chair with my cup of coffee and just talk to God. But I I couldn't do that in that season. It didn't work out like that in that season. So I filled the pockets that I had and the Lord started showing me those places. And when you start looking for those things, you find them. If you're not looking for them, if you're just convinced, well, I have no time for God, I have no time to fill my cup, then you'll never look for those times. But when you start looking for them and asking the Holy Spirit to show you, you know, how can I get this need met, then he will show you. And I don't want to live my life in a constant state of emergency because that's stressful. Now, when when I'm in an emergency and we all get there, and when I need Jesus and I'm very thankful that he shows up, but I would rather live a life of wisdom where I make plans for getting my needs met than to live a life of exhaustion and hoping at the end of the day I don't blow up. Because that's where I had gotten. I'd gotten to a place where I so disregarded my own need for good food and quiet time and rest and just some just a moment to laugh with a friend and things that nurtured my soul. I had so pushed my needs aside that I was irritable at every little infraction. And I was so tired and my body started rebelling. My body started, I started having problems that somebody in that was my age shouldn't have. I remember going on a vacation one summer and I had to sit the entire time. I had no energy. I was give out every time we walked from one place to the other. And I said during that vacation, next year, I will be able to do more. I will be able to get on these rides with my children and help my husband. And I was. And I wasn't superwoman. I'm still not superwoman, but I was better. And when you start paying attention to your needs and asking the Lord to help you to manage your resources wisely and show you what your resources are, then you'll see improvement. And that's part of growing up. Amen. It's part of becoming a mature woman of wisdom. And that's the goal. That's my goal. And I believe that's your goal too. I hope that my ramblings have been encouraging today and that it speaks to you where you are. And I really do want to see God do a good work in you and in me. Amen. But before you go, let's pray. Father, I thank you for these ladies who they just want to please you. They just want to do what you've put them here on earth to do, but they need your help to do that. God, you you've set it up so that we cannot do the things you've asked of us without you, without your grace, without your help, without your wisdom. And you're making us constantly into the image of Christ. And I pray, Lord, that you would speak to us in our hearts and show us the way and give us wisdom. And Lord, help us to see hope, Lord, today, in Jesus' name. Amen. Bye bye.