A Working Gal’s Guide to Grace
Before you start reading this one, I need you to get in the right mindset and promise me you’ll try, so you can really take in these words. Maybe save this one til everyone’s in bed. Get cozy! Take a deep breath and relax your shoulders, and lay down the heavy weight of all those expectations you carry around for yourself. Don’t read one more word til you drop everything, but you. * LONG POST ALERT. *
This topic alone could easily be an entire book!
Because let’s face it, there are MILLIONS of working moms (or gals) out there doing their thing, day in and day out. You’re wondering if ‘balance’ is really attainable, you question if you’re making the right decisions every day, you’re trying to maximize every minute for memories in the evening, and everything in between. I’m right here with you.
As a creative person, I love ‘working’: for me, it’s the act of creating, producing, writing or just putting my effort into something that the world will enjoy – that’s very fulfilling to me. I believe in the gifts God has given me, and I don’t want to bury them. I want to give them away to the world without expectation of anything in return. To me, that is my ‘work’. So with that, I enjoy working and having a routine and schedule.
But how quickly something so simple can change when you welcome a little one into your world. What once gave me confidence and fulfillment now shakes me sometimes: am I doing the right thing?
Are my priorities right?
Am I a good enough mom? Wife? Friend? The questions and sometimes, self-doubt and guilt creep in and even if we see it coming from a mile away – none of us are immune to the way it can make us feel.
Let’s dive in to the working gal’s guide to grace, shall we?
This entire post is predicated on a life-changing quote that I didn’t even know could be life-changing, until I committed to slowly implementing.
“Train the voice in your head to be kind.”
That’s where we start. I’m guessing you read that and possibly thought something like, “Oh. That sounds like a good thing to do, but what does it even mean? Blah.” Or maybe even, “Yeah that’s a nice idea. But that’s not doable.” Regardless of what you think – YOU. ARE. RIGHT.
Get it?
Yall, buckle up. I’m passionate about this topic, because I’ve been in the actual depths of this whole thing. Deep depths of darkness. I’m walking on the other side, daily: reaching out for grace, cutting the rope of negativity around my neck and watching it fall to the bottom of the sea. You can do this, too!
Here we go:
There are some truths about our MINDS and THOUGHTS that we need to accept so that we can enter into lives of peace, fruitfulness, warmth and joy – it’s not too hard or difficult! Trust me! If I can work through it, you can – I’m a really imperfect person recovering from perfectionism and an unhealthy, high-stressed way of going through my day-to-day.
Training the voice in your head to be kind takes discipline and a real desire for peace in your mind and heart. And I bet, since you’re reading this post, you’re interested. I was interested as I realized and was counseled on the importance of calling thoughts in your mind into question.
What’s our problem? We can’t do it all. We aren’t meantto do it all. Yet, we feel the weight of it all. We want that weight lifted. But, we easily extend grace to others, but never to ourselves.
Our solution?
Let’s begin:
1. Understand and accept the responsibility of your thoughts.
I’ll give you a very common example. You wake up, get your day going, get to work and around 10:30, you take a little break and hit Instagram. While scrolling, you see your friend on vacation, looking SO tan, fit and fab. You start to wonder when the last time you took an awesome vacation, or even worked out. Ugh, let down. You see another friend launching a project she’s super excited about, and you start to come down on yourself – I mean, shouldn’t you be better with time management?! Get it together and start getting things done! Ugh. Scroll a little further, you see another friend with her growing and glowing family and you compare your hectic and unworthy morning of chaos to her picture perfect one.
I chose Instagram because it’s such a common comparison trap, but it could be anything out there that sparks a negative thought you turn on yourself. Someone else has time for a date night, cooler birthday party, new house, friend group.
Guess what?
90 seconds into this, you’re feeling MUCH duller and lower than you were one minute ago – all from the power of your thoughts.
Do any of these posts have any bearing on your purpose or your lane or your responsibilities for your corner of the world? Absolutely not.
You need to take that voice telling you ‘You’re not creative like her. You’re not as good of a mom. You will never have it all together like that…’ that voice?
That ain’t right.
If you wouldn’t say it to your best friend, you shouldn’t say (or think) it to yourself. That is not you. Train it. Rebuke it and send those thoughts FLEEING. I want you to start literally calling them out. Say, ‘Hey. That’s not me. I don’t talk to my best friend that way, so I’m not going to talk to myself that way.’ Here’s another: “That’s great for them, but has no bearing on who I am or where God has me.”
I will never forget hearing and catching a thought in my head during a brainstorm meeting with the Cowboys. Right after I said something, I heard “That was a dumb idea, you should’ve thought that one through more.” You should’ve seen my chest puff out when I caught it and called it BS. I immediately won and kept it moving. My body and mind felt great.
I cannot tell you how much lighter my shoulders, heart, and mind feel since incorporating this into my life.
Now, let’s talk about the actual biblical power of what happens when you do this.
2. Take every thought captive. Paul writes about exactly this subject in 2 Corinthians 10:4, he says: “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh…”(AKA, we don’t always battle human vs. human)…verse 5 goes on to say: “We take hold of every thought…WE TAKE EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE…to obey Christ.”
CALL EVERY THOUGHT INTO QUESTION, and YOU’LL get to decide if it has power.
This verse tells us as blunt as you can be: we are at constant war within ourselves, in our minds. Just knowing this, will change the way you go about your day. Are we a generation continually distracted by social media and work and music and plans and podcasts and mom duties, making it difficult to take that extra second and call our thoughts into question? Absolutely.
But are we capable? 1000%. You have no idea how powerful that mind God gave you actually is. Now… time to take responsibility!
*Please don’t poke your eyes out because I refer to this book at least 14 times a day, but Caroline Leaf’s Switch On Your Brain explains our minds and their power in a very understandable, digestible way. This book changed my life, and I love getting messages and DM’s from yall about how it’s changing yours.
3. Accept that living this way, with an attention to your subconscious and thoughts, is not the norm – and watch your life change in a way that’s not the norm, either. It is not normal to slow down. Desensitize. Sanitize your mind. Strive for excellence. Run your own race without lugging around the heavy comparison. Doubling down to work on the unseen. Calling your heart and mind and motives into question. This isn’t normal, it’s not the way of the world. 99.9% of people will never experience inner peace because they’re too distracted to peel back layers and address it.
But one of my favorite verses, Romans 12:2 swoops right in with the good news on this: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
When you’re walking your own road, step for step with your purpose, it’s energizing. Invigorating, even! And when your mind is decluttered, you aren’t wondering what that purpose is – you don’t have to wonder. You see it right in front of you. There is something for you in the everyday: big or small. There is joy and peace that builds on each other brick by brick. Take on this challenge of renewing your mind by training the voice in your head to be kind. The grace will abound and your burden will be light. This is the working mom, stay at home mom, girl / aunt / sister guide to grace.
And I’m eager to hear how it’s going to change your world from the inside out!