(Inside: How to help people when you’re overwhelmed with the need. How to help people when it seems like you don’t have enough to offer.)

Extravagant Hope is excited to welcome our guest blogger, Chereyl Osborne. Chereyl is a wife, mother of two, Mimi of six, and friend who seeks to love God and encourage others, one day at a time.

How to Help People When You’re Overwhelmed with The Need

“Let’s do lunch,” she said.   “Soon,” she said.  I smiled, nodded and walked away with that same overwhelming feeling I had the last time a friend said…..”Let’s do….,” whatever.  These days, plans with friends go “unplanned” and my mental list of people’s needs goes beyond my physical ability to meet them.   It’s not that I haven’t read the “Simplify Your Life” books and made my people my priority;  it just feels like the days are shorter and there are so many more urgent needs in everyone’s lives.  It feels heavy and hard and I’m at a loss as to how to love all my people at all times.

Here I am in the dead of winter and all I seem to want to do with any free moment is hunker down under the quilt and despise this bitter- cold weather and wish for spring.  Going to lunch or hosting lunch seems out of the question.  And maybe you’re a younger version of me….and hosting a playdate or small group seems out of the question to you.   It’s not that our homes aren’t ready or that we wouldn’t enjoy the conversation….but, Girlfriend, there are so many needs and so little time, and doing absolutely nothing can sound really good on a dark winter day when you’re already stretched to the max.  Sunshine might help, but it takes energy and drive to be the planner of the tribes.  This one particular day, I didn’t have either one.   

The morning after she mentioned doing lunch, I awoke early.  It was a dark Monday morning and I did my usual throwing on the warm robe, pouring my coffee and pulling out my prayer journal and Bible.  I felt that overwhelming feeling again as I glanced down at my prayer list of family and friends,  because it read like a book you wouldn’t want to pick up :  cancer/divorce/prodigal children/financial strain/miscarriage/prison/dementia/nursing home/cemetery meetings/death…..and that was just one page.  “God, how do I do this?  How do I meet these needs and continue to be a good friend and continue to find time to care for and love my own family well?  How do I orchestrate this madness so I proceed positively and pray powerfully?  How do I work it all into my one, little life?” 

And in the stillness of my aching heart I heard His voice, (not audibly)…but in my spirit, I heard God say:  “Just love the Monday people!”

The.  Monday.  People. 

I glanced back down at my open journal and two names lit up, like a veil lifted from my eyes.  One was a friend facing a critical medical test and I knew she needed a call today, Monday.  The other was a Momma with a kid in prison and I wanted to finish a previous conversation we had shared.  She needed an encouragement card written out, sealed and mailed, today, Monday.  God specifically pointed out these two people from my list of other “urgent” needs and said:  “Just these two, today.”  I honestly also felt that overwhelming feeling leave me.  That feeling of trying to be there for everyone all the time, when I feel I have no time.   I sat and prayed over my entire prayer list then, lifting those other sweet people up to the One who can meet all those needs.  And as I prayed, my favorite verse came to mind:

 “Let the morning bring me Word of Your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in You.  Show me the way I should go, for to You I lift up my soul.”  (Psalm 143:8 NIV). 

Then I got up to get ready for work but I left that feeling right there in that room filled with lamplight and the Light of Christ:  that feeling of disappointing someone; that feeling of not doing enough; that feeling of needing to organize other people’s time or tightly schedule them into my time; that feeling of being overwhelmed.  I am not “overwhelmed”…..I’m not.

I just needed clarity.

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And God met me right there and gave it to me.  You see, we cannot do it all:  work, cook, teach, preach, sing, give, show up, love people the way they need to be loved……and guess what, Girlfriend, we are NOT supposed to do it all.  But we are supposed to love our Monday people.  The ones who really do need us “right now!”  And if we can make the call; pray the prayer; take a meal; show up at the hospital; watch a child; send a card; give a hug or simply sit down and listen….we should, indeed we must.  God will tell us what to do, He prompts our hearts…..and as my verse says:   He will show us the WAY we should go.  Just quiet your heart and listen, because sometimes He speaks in whispers and sometimes He shouts….listen and obey.  And do it again on Tuesday, one day at a time.

Just one person, one prayer, one hug at a time.

Love your Monday people!   

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