A Tangled Web – {When You Feel Like You Have to Do it All}

It started with a simple search engine query.  I needed some information for a blog post on Raising Arrows.  It was really quite straightforward.  Find the information, copy, paste, done.

But, I ended up lost in the world wide web.

I clicked on this and clicked on that and clicked some more.  Nine then ten then fifteen windows open.  Pretty soon I was living in the land of information overload.

And I didn’t want out.

I couldn’t seem to make myself close those windows.  I needed those windows.  I needed the information those windows contained.

Didn’t I?

If you haven’t figured me out by now, you need to know that I like information.  I like to analyze and find new things to try.  I am forever tweaking and changing things to make them more efficient.  It is who I am and how God created me.

However, there is a human side to my analyzing and information seeking that isn’t pretty.  It is the side that doesn’t know when to stop and becomes all tangled up.

Perhaps your web isn’t information and internet sites.  Perhaps your web is cookbooks or sewing projects (been there too!), extracurricular activities or mom’s meetings.  Our web can be anything that gets us in a tangle and feels like we can’t get out.  It might even feel somewhat comfortable to be there.  It feels safe to be busy.  It feels safe to be tangled.

It seems productive and useful.

But is it?

All those windows open on my computer were crying out for my time and energy.  They were sucking me dry.  I was devoting so much of myself to the things that tangled me I had very little left to give elsewhere.  I was consumed by my web.  All my creative and productive energies were spent there and the things in my life that truly mattered — my time with the Lord, with my husband and with my children — were suffering because I felt compelled to stay within the web of things I thought I needed to do.

It was time to get out.

But getting out often means falling.  Just as a bug breaks loose from the spider’s web and falls to the ground, I had to unstick myself and let myself fall.  I had to minimize windows, minimize projects, and minimize time spent weaving my way in and out of my tangled web.  I had to drop things I didn’t think I could drop.

The amazing thing about being in a tangled web is you often don’t realize how shackled you are until you are free.  Once free, you wonder how you ever felt comfortable in that place.  And yet, you must always guard against ending up back in there.  We humans seem to like sticky messes.

Break free, my friends, of all the things you think you have to do and begin to focus on the things you really do need to do…spending time in the Word, spending time with your family, being daughter, wife, and mother.  The rest can wait.

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