If you can’t do what you’re supposed to do, do what you can do!

This week has been a very stressful week for me. We’re having our annual kids Christmas drama this Sunday and I’m bringing the message for both main services. I reserved Wednesday as the day I was going to work up my sermon but as I sat to do it I found that I couldn’t. My mind was bombarded with all of the things I had to get done before the weekend and I was simply to overwhelmed to do what I needed to do.

I prayed for a moment, asking God to help me get my motivation or get my head in gear, whatever I needed. I didn’t care as long as I could get everything done! It finally occurred to me, "If I can’t do what I’m supposed to do… I can at least do what I can do". I couldn’t handle working on my sermon, I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but I had some sets for the play that needed to be painted. It was mindless work. Fun even. I went up and spent several hours painting. Soon the stress and my petrified mind set melted away. As it turned out, these sets were one of the things keeping me from being able to focus on what I should have been doing. I think what held me from getting this sooner was that my ‘supposed to do’ task wasn’t nearly as fun as my ‘eventually should do’ task was. In the big picture it didn’t matter.  They were ultimately all connected anyway.

Most of the advice I’ve gotten tells me to prioritize and attack the most important thing first. I would imagine that works for most people. For me however, it seems to be those darned little things that overwhelm me. So the next time I find myself getting stressed, I’m doing to ask myself, "If you can’t do what you should do, what can you do?" and then I’ll do that.