Survival Mode

"Why does the alarm on your phone keep going off?" my husband asked me as we ate shrimp scampi.

I chuckled. "Because if I don't remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing every second of the day, I will never accomplish anything."

My husband looked at me very seriously. "Well, what's this alarm for?"

"I've got three invoices to finish up and mail," I replied.

"What was the one before that?"

"To take out the trash."

I'm not sure if you've ever found yourself in survival mode, but I'm going to assume you have. Because there are many seasons of life that repeat, even after assuming we've survived the "roughest season of life yet."

Survival mode seasons are the roughest, in my opinion. There are constant needs, constant motion, constant busyness. And once things settle down, they hurry up again just as fast.

I am in survivor mode. 

I'm just trying to get by some days. Between lesson plans for Sunday School, for Creative Writing, for Beginning Computers, for QuickBooks, to the ever-changing problems that arrive when expanding a business, I find myself sleeping less and less and relying more and more on Starbucks.

Today, I was sitting at my desk going over lesson plans for an upcoming class. I noticed most of my PowerPoints ( a labor of LOVE and TEARS) were missing from my flash-drive.

You are not going to cry, I told myself. You are going to stay up late and you are going to finish 12 PowerPoint presentations before Tuesday. You have plenty of time.

But I discovered something about life as I was giving myself a pep talk. This is still a good season of life, regardless of how tough it is. This season is teaching me how to work harder than I've ever worked in my life and it's also taught me how to manage a demanding schedule while still making time to play XBOX with my husband.

God is teaching me a great deal about the load of stress I can carry. Turns out, I'm great with lots of stress. It also turns out, too much stress for too long will wear me out and I will crack from the pressure. And by crack, I mean cry at every little thing. And feel as though everyone and everything is against me.

I'm running on empty in my survival mode. But God reminded me of one great truth found in Ecclesiastes:

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

There is a time for everything. For seasons of busyness. For seasons of ease. Nothing lasts forever. We go through different trials in life. As my pastor always says, "You're either in the middle of a storm, coming out of one or about to head into one." Life if full of difficulties and challenges. They come and go just as easily as the easy seasons do. So, we press forward. And we do our very best.

I also try to remember that we all face survival mode in our lives. We all have our own battles. What has been, has been before. I take comfort in this verse from Ecclesiastes:

 "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

 Not. A. Thing. My heavy load is the same heavy load others have carried before me. Though it's different, the load weight is the same.

I'm not sure when this rough chapter of life will come to a close, but my new approach to it is to no longer just "survive" it but to thrive. To learn. To take something away. To enjoy it. Because the next season will come, and when it does, I want to enjoy it.

--Jessi

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