TIME OUT!!!!!

Ok, everyone knows that women can multi-task like nobody's business. We juggle alot of things all at once. We can be making lunches while we make breakfast, while we are planning dinner in our minds. We work outside the home, in the home and all around the home. We are indeed mother, nurse, chef, counselor, interior decorator, veterinarian, entertainment director, teacher, laundry mat operator, Mrs. Can-Fix -Anything, exterminator, intercessor, secretary, local GPS system for even the little things from a missing shoe to the receipt from two months ago, hairdresser, fashion stylist, shopper, maid, janitor, ambassador, chauffeur and I said it once but it definitely merits twice....MAID!
And we do it all day in and day out, year after year, seen and unseen, over and over....until one day the something in us just has too burst forth...
TIME OUT!!!!!!

And you know what...you go girl! Take your time out. It's not selfish, it's not even nonspiritual.
In fact, it is spiritual. God told us to do it. He created us to do it. In fact, He did it! He created the entire earth and then said..."Time Out!" And He did...He took time out! And Adam didn't roll over and die and the garden didn't dry up and the world kept spinning. Life went on even without God doing what He does best for one day!

So...TIME OUT for you woman of God! Time out to regroup, recover your sanity, make sense of it all, and finally shave that part of your leg you haven't had time to do in your take a nano second shower! Rediscover the voice inside you, the pleasure of deep breathing, the beauty of silence and the incredible release of doing nothing just for no reason...and you aren't bed-ridden with a flu (not that the flu has ever stopped you before)

We have to do it. We have to do it for all the little ones who need their homework done without you crying. We have to so we will actually will laugh at the crazy things that happen during our day instead of having a melt down.

No one will make you do it, beside you. No one will make sure you take that time....no one will look at you loosing it and say..."TIME OUT FOR YOU MIGHTY WOMAN!' So say it, and do it and live and laugh!

Ex 31:1717

It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.'"

Ex 23:11-12 12

Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed.

CRITICAL SITUATION!

Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Tim 1:6-7

Recently I was watching a show on television called "Critical Situation." This was not your light hearted sit-com or mellow-drama of the week, but a show on the National Geographic channel that highlights real people thrust from the routine into survivor mode in a moment. It reaccounts real situations in which people are going about the usual and the unexpected happens and they are put into a situation which requires total survival of the moment before their rescue or the situation is resolved. The show then dissects the situation in a play by play account of what they did, or could have, or should have done in order to survive their unplanned and unanticipated turn of events.

What intrigued me by the show was the prevailing truth that in a single moment life can transform itself from routine to critical and it is in the window of time called the "golden moments", which is between the second of impact of the new situation and being consumed into the tragedy, that is the most critical . It is in that "golden moment" that choices are made and actions are taken that can determine survival or demise. But it is there, in that moment, that most people make the biggest mistakes, and blame the event or the critical situation for their demise.

The biggest mistake most people make is in the thinking that the turn of events or the critical situation is doomed and that they have no chance. Most of the time critical situations are survivable, and the factor that determines survival is the ability of the individual to make right choices in the "golden moments". What I need to remind you today, is that you don't have to be climbing a snowcapped ice glacier or in a jungle in South America or on a sinking boat in the ocean to apply this truth. It is a truth the encompasses every aspect of our human lives, physically, emotionally and spiritually. What we do and think and percieve in the "golden moments" of the unexpected turn of events of our little day, or relationships, or destiny will determine the outcome and our well-being and livelihood.

Experts say that when faced with the unexpected, only 2 out of 10 people will do the right thing. The rest will be stunned, belwildered or hysterical. Doesn't that sound like most of us in the midst of the unexpected and unexplained!?!

When Paul was talking to Timothy and told him to remember to stir up his gift because God had not given a him a spirit of fear, he was saying, in the "golden moment", don't draw from the chaos of circumstances, draw from what is deposited in you and keep your calm, keep your common sense. Make informed, already trained for this decisions and actions that will save you and bring you out alive. Most of us kill ourselves unnecessarily in a bad situation, when we should have helped ourselves.

In some rescue attempts for drowning victims, the rescuer has to knock the victim out in order to save him because the victim in a panic resists the rescuer and he becomes his own enemy of death. So do we in even the ordinary turn of events. We thrash about in a panic, resisting the new or the change, we throw out our common sense for over emotional responses that kill us in the end more than the event we were facing.

So today...keep that in mind. Don't be the other eight people who lose their minds and get washed away in the critical situation. Keep your cool, keep your common sense and draw from what you have been taught and you will make it through just fine.