The more I seek to live in the Kingdom Economy, the more I realize hours truly are the currency, and moments are the change. Not only do moments add up or not go as far as we'd like, but change in our life is truly determined by the moment.
It is so easy to plan a day. We can plan our accomplishments, we can even pencil in our dreads. We can plan our righteous reactions if presented again, with yesterday's failures. Some of us make a note of obligations and promises, if we are afraid the day might get busy. Others center their day around their obligations and promises. Yet, one thing is truly consistent in all of this. Plans are essential to accomplishment and purpose is essential for motivation, but life happens moment by moment.
A dear friend commented to me that she could see in my last video that my eyes truly showed I had experienced a tough week. She was so right! My eyes are very expressive . . . Furthermore her statement, although she did everything in her power and verbal conveyance to assure me I still looked fine and she was expressing concern not criticism; confirmed the information in this very article.
I have discovered the truth of emotional exhaustion, which in kingdom terms, is time poorly spent. One absolutely cannot make up for or take up the slack for another person's lack of emotional interest. Neither can one take responsibility for things outside of their control. One can try. An individual can attempt to provide enough enthusiasm and energy to solicit the interest of others, and one can certainly take blame for things outside of their control, but it results in emotional exhaustion. If time were money, emotional exhaustion would be a result of "throwing good money after bad . . ."
Now since I've shared the truth about spending time poorly, please let me share what else I've discovered! When we become emotionally exhausted, we begin a new way to spend time. We begin to spend time thinking about what's wrong and what feels so bad and the next thing we know, if we're not careful, we're spending even more time thinking about it. So, we take a bad situation or another's reaction, add time and energy with no results, then spend time pondering and contemplating what went wrong, and what we would do differently. Then we find ourselves in a rut, so the best human idea for getting out of the rut is talking to another human, which of course takes more time. For some reason we have this idea if we share the time poorly spent, it will somehow give it value. Before we know it, a problem that is completely out of our control has not only controlled our emotions, but it's controlled our time! And that of someone else, as well. That is not to say, if there is a situation that needs some clarification or you'd like prayer or to be pulled out of the rut, great. But more often than not, when we get to the rut of exhaustion, and start talking, we just pull someone else down with us.
I've realized there are simply things I can do nothing about in this world and the great news is, my G-d doesn't expect me to! In that freedom from responsibility, though, He also doesn't expect me to spend more time on things I can do nothing about. If G-d has placed something within our power to do, He gives us the energy and the time to accomplish it. If we spend our time on something that isn't within our power to do, not only do we spend that time unwisely, exhaust ourselves, but we miss another opportunity that would have been "time well spent."When my dear friend told me, she knew I was under a lot of pressure, but I could call her any time, I realized right then, I so value the time we do get to chat, I certainly didn't want to spend that time on a subject I find displeasing.
Maybe it's age, maybe it's wisdom, maybe it's both, but I know energy spent on useless endeavors is time I'll never get back, and energy wasted. That fact didn't register in my twenties. Spending time thinking about the disappointment of that fact is again, time I'll never get back. Talking about the discouragement is not only time I won't get back, but time I've taken from someone else that they won't get back either. Time and energy are at a premium these days for all of us, and once we get a glimpse of time as the gift of life YHWH has given, it has a value we simply cannot take lightly and don't want to waste. Throwing good effort and energy on something outside of our control is a lot like buying a new battery for a car with a bad engine. It doesn't fix the problem and will actually run down the new energy and still never move.
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