I’m a little off balance today and I thought to myself, “What is going to fix this?”

Well- the answer is, lots of things could fix this but the only one I have access to RIGHT now is 1) prayer, 2) coffee and 3) writing for myself.

So here I am ignoring all other responsibilities to get out what it’s in my mind.

And yes, I do mean what’s IN my mind.

How do you tackle an overburdened mind? For me, the easiest and quickest way is to sit down with my Passion Planner and just dump everything out of my brain that is taking up too much space. When I don’t do that it has some catastrophic results for the rest of my day.

Let’s take a little trip down the road of my Monday morning, shall we?

Woke up late to a pile of dishes in the sink and the worst feeling of knowing that I was starting my day already behind on life. So I threw myself straight into work instead of sitting down and getting my head on straight from the beginning and that was a huge mistake.

I got Jude and Scottie fed, finished the dishes, threw sheets in the wash and was two minutes into my shower when all the weight of the world felt like it came crashing down on me. There were so many things that I needed to do that I had forgotten to do, deadlines I was behind on, people I had neglected.

I needed to get it all out and do my brain dump, but I was on a “timeline and a mission to be perfect”, so what did I do? I barrelled on through my day.

During the next hour and a half I did some not me like me things:

1) Got all the way to Costco, finally found a parking spot & a nice cart that wasn’t broken, pushed Jude all the way to the door before I realized I had forgotten the Costco card.

2) Legitimately daydreamed a scenario of having the car stolen as I was loading Jude back into his car seat at Costco. Get to Target, get out of the car, shop for the necessities, come back after 30 minutes or so to find out that I don’t have my car keys. After a minute or so of turning everything inside out, I look in the window to see my keys sitting in the back window, in a spot I never put them, with the car completely unlocked. Ironically enough, the scenario I wrote in my head did not involve me welcoming someone to steal my car in this way.

3) Made two more stops… definitely did a lot more things I’m not proud of. Got home, realized I had not put fresh sheets back on the beds, but realized this as I was carrying in a sleeping Jude… so right now he’s laying in his crib on a mattress with no sheet.

These are all small and careless things that are not the end of the world but they are also things I don’t usually do followed in quick succession after each other – showing just how scatterbrained I feel right now.

I just got an annoying phone call from insurance and my head hurts and I’m rehashing almost every conversation I’ve had in the last two days and regretting all of my words and wishing I could take back all of my word vomit and I am getting annoyed by all of the things I’ve done wrong today-

Until I realize that it is all a result of being super distracted by the things clogging up my normal “thinking straight frame of mind” life that I strive to live. I haven’t brain dumped anything all day even though literally once an hour I’ve heard that voice reminding me that I desperately needed to.

I didn’t start my day with anything life-giving: no bible, no lovely thoughts, no worship music. Not even really any playing with Jude. Just straight into work.

I have Alexandered my way through the entire day being terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad from the very thoughts in my mind to the actions I made. 

So here I am, present me, here to remind future me that it is okay to not be perfect. It is okay to not tackle everything on the to-do list, to not get out of the door on time, or even at all.

Don’t let the dishes stack up and don’t neglect deadlines, but be sure to spend the beginning of your day doing things that bring you joy so that you remember why this life is so special.

Take that moment to dump all of your worries and cares onto the paper, out of your mind, and into God’s hands.

Ultimately, find ways to let the light shine in through all of the dark shadows of your thoughts. 

You might not get everything done for the day, but you will live a much happier Monday.