Most people are excited to see their calendar turn from April to May. The month of May brings warmer weather, mothers day, graduations, and everyone knows summer is just around the corner. For the last two years I can’t say that I have been excited to see May. For reasons I can’t fully explain I feel like when May begins I start to play the catch-up game.  I feel like I am always one or two steps behind where I want to be.

Last year I remember how overwhelmed I became.  I had lots of projects that I was trying to juggle and eventually the balls started to drop one by one.  Eventually there were a few things that I loved doing stopped and I never got them going again.

This year I experienced the same thing.

Right now I feel like I have a lot of things going on in the church and in my personal life and I sometimes struggle to find the time to get everything done.  I know that I have fallen into the trap of saying yes to many times and I am running from one thing to the next.  But also I think that the pressures of Christmas, Lent and Easter have finally caught up with me. Also there is so much going on this time of the year and I find myself going is too many directions.  I am thankful because at this point I am able to name and to claim these things and I can do my best to change them.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately because there are certain things I need to start doing for myself and I put too much importance in the day to day tasks that I forget about what I need to do for myself.  I recently read something that really struck me.  It said that we all need to take time for ourselves and here is how I am going to remember to do that: I am going to divert daily, withdraw weekly, and abandon annually.  I am going to lay out opportunities for me to do this and that way I can take care of myself and not feel stressed or overwhelmed.

This way I will not feel like day to day tasks are getting done but not much else.  I will not look back and realize that I was only really able to put together one post on this blog this past month.

But fear not because I have been working hard behind the seen’s to get things up and running again. I want to do it right and to do it well.

One of the things that I have done is to reach out to other bloggers to join their teams. This month I have talked with Dan at Bibledude.net and Chrystal at SoulMunchies.com to start blogging for them.  I am excited to take my blogging to the next level and I think that they are going to help me do that.  I also talked with the local paper and I am going to be writing again for the Bladwinsville Messenger once a month.

I am very excited about these opportunities. Not only will I be writing for them but I have some new and exciting material to share with you, the faithful readers of Lutheran Grilled Cheese.