Hope's Journey - First Things First

Quite a few more years down the line. It’s Monday morning and I have a Church hangover! Sundays are great, I love Sundays and all the amazing things that God does with all the wonderful people in our Church. Each Sunday holds new adventure and excitement as well as so much more work than I can ever really manage in one day. I give my best emotionally, spiritually and physically. I love, I pour coffee, I listen to problems, sometimes I preach, sometimes I sing, occasionally I change a baby’s nappy in the crèche, I cook a big roast for anything up to twenty people, if necessary I do a hospital visit for the people that weren’t able to attend Church and feel left out. The list goes on and on and on and then Monday morning comes! 

It’s eight o’ clock in the morning and the phone rings. I am awake but the first coffee of the day hasn’t got into my blood stream yet so I am in a zombie state. It’s one of our congregation members; he is in terrible pain and needs someone to take him to the hospital urgently. The ambulance won’t come fetch him as he is an ex-drug addict and they don’t believe he is ill, they think he is trying to get to hospital for some morphine or other free drugs so they refuse to fetch him! It’s desperate so Eric and I agree to fetch him and take him to hospital; he lives half an hour away so we aim to be there by ten. 

Flying Breakfast

Breakfast is flying all over the kitchen as Amy tries to feed herself and the phone rings again. We are needed at the police station as another congregation member needs help as their car was impounded. They urgently needed help as the husband was due at work, which meant we needed to be there before eleven. Well clearly that wouldn't work but we planned to attempt to do it on the way to the hospital despite our concerns.  Amy's breakfast would have to wait and her night clothes would become her day clothes on this crazy Monday morning as we were in a hurry!

Let me cut this long story short! Of course we couldn’t sort out the police station and the hospital need in the time frame that was expected of us, so we had to race to the police station. Then seeing it was going to take too long had to race to the hospital and then race back to continue sorting out the car at the police station. Needless to say by the end of Monday we were totally shattered! Did I mention that Monday is supposed to be our slow day, where we ease into the week? Ha ha – yes that was our slow day, the day that is supposed to be not too busy so we can manage another week of hard work which climaxes with an intensely busy Sunday.

Now granted all Monday’s aren’t like this particular one, but they could easily be. The reason they are not always crazy is because we know to put first things first and the only reason this Monday was out of control was because we forgot our golden rule. I blame it on the coffee! I was caught off guard before the coffee had settled so didn’t think clearly and rationally. 

Option Two

This is one possibility of how Monday could have gone: It’s eight o’ clock in the morning and the phone rings. I am awake but the first coffee hasn’t got into my blood stream yet so I am in a zombie state. I ignore the phone and allow the coffee to settle then I check on the children and give them breakfast. The phone rings again but I ignore the phone again as I am busy taking care of my children’s needs. The children have finished their breakfast and are dressed in play clothes – it’s a beautiful sunny day so I take them into the garden to play while I return the two missed calls from earlier on. Oh dear poor thing really needs to get to hospital urgently, we will get there by ten and see what we can do. I return call number two but sadly I have already committed to the hospital need so apologise saying that I can’t help with their need but will have a think about who I could possibly ask to meet their need. Perhaps they too could have a think and see if they can think of anyone that they know that can help them. I get off the phone, get the kids in the car and get off to the hospital with the plan of heading out to the park with the children afterwards to enjoy the rest of the sunny day.

God Comes First

For me first things are my relationship with God, the state of my home and time with my family. If I neglect any of these things I lose the balance in my life. Time with my God is essential. It is not a religious act of reading my Bible and praying in order to keep my conscience clear - it's definitely nothing like that at all. It's like eating breakfast - if I don't eat breakfast in the morning my body gets annoyed with me. In the same way if I don't have a nice cuddle and chat with Jesus in the morning my Spirit and soul gets annoyed with me. Sometimes I have a time of prayer, most times I read the Bible and other times I just sit. I say;

“Good morning Lord, here I am! I don't really want to pray and am too tired to read but I still want to be with you so here I am.”

Not very spiritual really, but I know He is with me and we have a nice "cuddle". My relationship with God is similar to my relationship with my husband. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we work and sometimes we just sit and cuddle.

I will stop here but chapter 4 does continue, for full details about this book please go here.