Early to Rise Challenge: Day 13

 

I picked the wrong day to be lackadaisical about getting up on my own, counting on my husband to wake me up when he got dressed around 6:10.  Turns out that he was running late too.  But on the plus side, I was really refreshed today.  And my children still haven't adjusted to the time change, so I had a little extra space to get a good quiet time completed before they got up.

"Focus on Other People" is the theme for today.  In that spirit, I finally decided to cast on the gloves I mentioned two days ago.  They will be a nice, simple project that I can tote around easily - in other words, they will fit into schedule niches of mine that my other WIPs (Works in Progress) won't without really adding too much pressure to my schedule.

Blessing others is something that I like to do, but I'm often afraid to follow through.  It makes me feel very vulnerable to expose that part of myself to others.  Blessings and gifts are very personal things and I think they reveal much about the giver.  I'm a naturally closed, introverted person - enough so that a therapist once opined that I may actually have clinical Social Anxiety Disorder - so it is difficult for me to open up in any way to people I don't know extremely well.  I generally prefer to bless others as part of a group, or in some other way that keeps me safely anonymous.

What I try to do instead is to focus on serving God each day.  In theory, this would amount to basically the same thing, since serving God generally involves blessing His people.  But I must admit that this can be kind of a cop-out for me.  It's certainly realistic for someone to say, "I don't possess spiritual gifts X, Y or Z; therefore I don't participate in those types of activities as often as others."  However, I tend to use other, more individual acts of worship as a crutch or an excuse to not put myself in the uncomfortable situation of servings others directly.  It's certainly something for me to pray about.  Change will likely have to come slowly, in small steps.