This post was written pre COVID-19, but we feel this is as relevant today as any other day. We hope you are encouraged by it.
Have you ever had a year that you would rather forget? A season where you wished you could press the off button just for a minute to catch your breath? Well we were there two years ago, and feel like we have only just recovered. With that said, the stress experienced and the ensuing dramas, have taught us so many things, and led us to a better place in our family life, that honestly may not have happened if we didn’t experience all that we did. To give you an insight into our season, it began with plans to renovate our home. Those plans were ticking over in the background when a beloved family member passed away and we found out we were pregnant with our much longed for third baby. Renovations commenced, the baby decided that four hours of sleep in twenty four hours was plenty – no joke (this lasted until she was 16 months old), my husband changed jobs due to the job market, I went back to work after nine months to a new boss, the newly renovated home got broken into, we finally moved back into our home – which was amazing, but I didn’t enjoy it for the first two months as the baby and I got dreadfully ill.
During this time, I was talking to my Dad, who just couldn’t believe what was going on in our world. Every time we spoke, something else had happened or was delayed or impacted our family. One time, as I tearfully added to the list of what was going on, he just said “ beware of the layers”. When he first said it I laughed as it reminded me of Donkey in Shrek – when they talk about how onion have layers…
We had seriously got to the point, where we practically lived on no sleep – thanks to the baby, we had decisions to make left, right and center with the reno, we still tried to work out some family time with our other kids who didn’t understand why we were so tired all the time. We simply had no idea on how to handle the building layers of stress, while continuing to work and do life. That word of encouragement, beware the layers – made such a huge difference to our mindset. We were able to compartmentalise some of the stressful things going on. We were able to almost categorise them into the level of urgency they had to be attended to. In the end, we sought the advice of a psychologist on how to handle what was going on. When he looked at me and said, tell me what’s going on… I started with the lack of sleep… his response, “ What do you mean?” I answered, “ I literally get four hours of broken sleep a night”. I will never forget the look on his face and the nervous laugh of my husband. He asked me how I function… I laughed and replied not well, that’s why we are here. We did use his advice to work through our layers, and to build strategies that helped us deal with the layers of stress bound up in a ball of lack of sleep
I hope you don’t find yourself in a season like this, where although you learn a lot and you needed to go through the fire to get there, remember the phrase beware of the layers. Use it as a tool, to work through the various stressful situations, use it to motivate you – that you will get through the layers in due time. Use it to understand where your capacity is, and when you need to reach out for help. One thing I can tell you two years after this season is, I have got my sleep back,(I realised I am actually a nice person when I’m not sleep deprived) and I know that I am tougher and stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. In the end it was worth it.
Homes of Victory 