Yes or no: married life

Sunday morning Jimmy wasn't feeling like himself. We were supposed to teach Sunday school at 10:45, so I called our stand in (my dad) to see if he was willing to teach. He was, so I headed off to meet my parents and aunt that were in town to go to the 9AM service while old Jim stayed in bed.

The 4 week sermon series that started 2 weeks ago has me hooked- and I'm sure many, if not all, of my blog readers can relate to it. It's called Antidotes for the Out-of-Control life. So far he has preached on Slowing down in a Hurry Up World and last week's was titled If I Don't Do It....Remember Rule #6. Needless to say, if you can guess as to what this is about and you know me at all (yep, I'm the "yes girl"), I was more than looking forward to some/any advice on how to get more balance/margin/control over my life that I seem to have over committed my time. If you ever feel like this, I HIGHLY recommend you watching the sermons from the links I provided above. Adam is an amazing preacher and like all of his sermons, he delivers a message that is applicable to everyday life and something that you can relate to, with biblical references to give you guidance from the bible.

Anyways---onto the real story :) The four of us are sitting in church (dad, me, aunt, mom) and at the start of the sermon, Adam usually talks about input that people have given him throughout the week on the topic at hand via email or facebook. This last week he posted this question:

"I have a problem saying "no". I can justify saying "yes" to so many things and this results in an out-of-control life. That's part of the focus of this weekend's sermon. Do any of you struggle with this? How and why?"

He read off a few comments and then said this: "I had one guy send me a message saying that his wife struggles with this a lot and is involved in lots of things. He tries to balance her out and help her to feel ok about saying "no". He said the funniest thing is that while she says yes to everyone else, it seems as if the only person she doesn't have a problem saying "no" to is him!!"
I chuckled along with the rest of the congregation....thinking to myself, "I really wish Jimmy was here because I'd love to see his reaction....I know he thinks the exact same thing about me".

Fast forward to later in the day when we went to go visit my grandmother and grandadday (the one who had open heart surgery- he's doing well!!) because it was their birthday- yep, they have the same birthday! They had watched the service online and we were discussing the sermon with them. I mentioned to my grandparents how funny that comment was and that I could just imagine Jimmy saying that about me! As we got into the car to leave...Jimmy looked at me and asked if Adam had really read that comment out loud to the whole congregation and I said, yes and that I thought it was funny! He pulls up his facebook message that he sent Adam on his phone and reads it to me....pretty much word for word what Adam had relayed to the congregation in SEVEN different services and online :) Are you following along? Haha- it was Jimmy that sent that message to our pastor and it was about ME!

So there you have it, our dirty laundry revealed to thousands of people at church. Haha. But I will admit it, I do have a serious "yes" problem and that is one of my goals in 2011 to really evaluate what I'm saying yes to, decide whether the work I will be doing energizes me and seriously assess if I have the time in my life to do it---and ensure that I don't have every hour of every day booked....because everyone knows the best stuff seems to happen on a whim. This sermon series has been great in giving me some perspective on how and why I need to truly do this :)

And for you, Jimmy...I will make a conscious effort to say "yes" to you more often* than "no" and spend lots of quality/unplanned time together in 2011.

*disclaimer- this does not include saying "yes" to going out to dinner every night, allowing you to buy a guitar because you "want to pick up a new hobby", allowing you to sit at home all the time to play PS3. When you ask the question if you REALLY have to clean the bathrooms/vacuum/make the bed--- that answer will always be "yes" my dear, so at least you have that to look forward to!!