I was talking this over one day with a trusted friend, who added, “Yes! And your husband!” And it was then I realized I hadn’t even added Paul to the list of “stuff I’m giving my time and energy to.” Meeting up for lunch no longer happened, and date nights had become obsolete. Once upon a time, we put our children to bed at 7 p.m. and enjoyed the rest of the evening together. Now our teenagers stayed up later than us, or I went to bed after putting our younger children to bed and let Paul stay up with our big guys.
Things had gotten horribly out of balance. Good organization is not a substitute for true order. My life was out of order, and it was costing me.
I remember standing in my dad’s classroom. (Yes! We taught together in classrooms across the hall from each other, and it was the best! You can see why I loved being at the school.) “I feel like I am able to perfectly manage this,” I told my dad, holding up my hands about the size of an eight-pound bass, “but I can barely function when the day looks like this,” and I moved my hands out to what you would make that fish if you were bragging. If anything extra was added to my day (and it always did get added), smoke streamed out of my ears.
“You don’t have a margin,” my dad gently pointed out. In the midst of our conversation, he could tell that I was operating much too close to the limits of what I could peacefully handle. That meant that regular life was at the outer edge of peace, with no room for taking a breath.
He was right.
And so, I sent an email to my boss saying I had to cut back. I thought I could limp along until the end of the school year. But it was only November, which wasn’t a good sign.
Truthfully, I had to make changes immediately. I was beginning to look at my life as one giant never-ending to-do list. There was no joy. There was no peace. Heck, I never even noticed the weather anymore. Was it cold? Was it hot? I didn’t know. I ran from my van to drive somewhere to get out, go in and do something, and get back in the van. I was sad and conflicted because I loved working at the school. But I knew, deep down, that my life was disordered.
I had become such a bundle of anxiety and exhaustion that I needed a complete reset. My family needed me. They needed me physically present, to help with all the things a mother does. But they needed me emotionally present, spiritually present, which meant not being someone who stared down every day, wishing it was already over.
God didn’t want me to live that way, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. He doesn’t want that for any of us. He wants us to have joy and freedom. And yes, he needs our “Yes!” to do the things he’s asked of us, but we need to carefully and mindfully consider what those actually are. We all have commitments, things we have to say yes to. We have loved ones, obligations, and responsibilities. We aren’t free to cut all the cords and walk away.
But we can have order, and we can have peace.
At some point in the midst of those weeks of slowly, ever so slowly admitting to myself that my life, my being, was in a state of disorder, I called my mama. In tears, I admitted to her that I felt sad and exhausted, and I was also starting to have panic attacks driving down the highway (I’m nothing if not dramatic).
“You know you can quit, Rach,” she said. And instantly, I remember it so clearly, it was like she had rotated the valve of my emotional pressure cooker. All the pent-up fear and anxiety I had been holding on to was released, because for the first time I realized there might be a solution, that I didn’t need to keep living this way. That life could be wonderful and joyful again, if I could find the ability to take control of — and simplify — the pace.
I was so grateful that she said those words, even if I had no intention of following her advice. “Of course I can’t quit,” I thought. “Everyone needs me and all the gifts I have to offer! I bring so much to the table, how can they get along without me?” It’s possible a little pride was mixed into the equation.
One night, as I was crying out to God in the midst of my stress, I heard him tell me something. It was one of those moments when you know it’s God because you wouldn’t, you couldn’t, come up with these words in this moment of your life.
“Saying yes to me,” I heard him say, “doesn’t mean saying yes to everything!”
And that, my friend, was the light-bulb moment of the century.
Teaching at the school was a good thing. But I had allowed my sense of mission and purpose — my sense of talents and abilities — to be shifted from my primary responsibility to my husband and children toward my job outside the home. Things were out of balance because what was required of me to continue this kind of life-outside-the-home pace was more than I had to give.
A few weeks later, I walked away from the job altogether.
Saying no is a difficult decision. Saying yes makes people so much happier. Not that people make you feel bad for saying you can’t do something. It’s a lot more fun when you can give them an answer that is going to make their life easier: “Yes! I will cover that need. Yes! I can help you out with this.”
But I was on burnout, and I had to change.
It was embarrassing and difficult for me to walk away from my job. Honestly, I felt like a failure. The only reason I could call my boss and say I needed to stop working was an emergency my husband had at his law practice. He was in a season of needing me to be present to him as he worked through big issues, and that gave me the courage to step away from teaching. Thank you, Lord, for kind and loving people who gave me the freedom to utter those words, “I can’t keep doing this.”
And so, I came back home. I began to put my main energy and focus back into my family. And within a few months, I started to craft order, which brought me peace.
order brings peace
Now, this is not a book about how leaving your job and staying at home will solve all your problems. The world is filled with working moms, and I am grateful for that. We need women in the workforce, bringing their light and wisdom and spirit to the world. And when that’s what a woman is supposed to be doing, there is grace for it. Whether a woman works because she has to or because she wants to, when it is what is best for the family (for the money, for a woman’s use of her skills and interests, for her sanity), it is a feasible option. I love that we all have the freedom to make that decision. We each need to prayerfully consider, within ourselves and with our spouse, what our family needs. And then we proceed. We are either outside the home from 9 to 5 or we aren’t. Maybe we are away in the evenings, or maybe being away in the evenings is the least peaceful solution. Maybe we work nights a few days a week to be home the rest. Whatever it is, once you find the rhythm that works, you will feel it.
For me, I had achieved the biggest factor of order: I had simplified the disorder of my priorities. While quitting a job you love isn’t always the answer, in this situation I knew it was. My commitments had drained my energy, and I had nothing left to give my family. My husband and children deserved a version of me that wasn’t completely used up on all my other endeavors.
The first step in order is identifying your priorities and directing your energy accordingly. We proceed from there.
But first, let’s talk about what it means to have order. We need to understand what true order is by first addressing what it isn’t.
Order isn’t a matter of having the most organizational bins or the most detailed calendar. It’s not about labeled shelves and clearly marked containers. Those are all nice to have, but order is much bigger than that.
Maintaining order in our lives means keeping our priorities straight. It’s having an understanding of what God has asked me to do, and then doing it. Order means giving the proper