I Think I Can

My personality is a wonderfully frustrating and obnoxiously silly combination of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and perfectionism...two things that do not mix well and which cause me to frequently ask God "What on Earth were You thinking?"

Let me give you some examples:

I am always running late.  Really late.  Even for important things.  I have no concept of time and very little natural sense of urgency, yet  I can't leave the house until I'm positive I have every single thing that I could possibly ever need with me...which makes me even later.  But to go anywhere for an hour without granola bars, bug spray and the coupon it took me fifteen minutes to find "just in case we pass Hobby Lobby and feel like stopping in" would be horrific.  Seriously.

I get really overwhelmed by what seem like really simple things to most people, like filling the dishwasher.  If I let myself dwell on the "enormity" of the task, I can't even function, yet  I have an innate need to fill it the exact same way every time, methodically placing every dish in its own specific place, and I'm insanely insistent about the spoon to fork to knife ratio in each compartment of the silverware holder.  I know.  Abnormal.  But trust me...my normal is not your normal.

As you may be able to imagine, this whole idea of uprooting our seven-branched family tree and replanting it somewhere else (along with all its junk) is looming in my future like a half-starved T-Rex peering through my front door.  The thought of packing up my life and moving everything I own from one house to another makes my brain short out. 

I can't fathom it...beginning, middle or end; it's simply too big of a task for an ADHDer like me to handle. 

Which is why I'm currently alternating between bursts of overwhelmed hyperventilation-inducing tears, waving of arms in characteristic crazy-Lisa style, and staring cathartically off into space.  Pinterest and Craigslist have fallen captive to my recent half-blank zoning sessions, where I'm searching and dreaming about the perfect things with which to fill my new house...you know, the one that I'll never get to live in if I don't actually remove my backside from the couch.

The cutest thing I've packed so far.

Don't get me wrong.  I am      s l o w l y  plugging away at all the little molehills-turned-mountains, but the obsession to pack every box "perfectly" (on top of my general state of overwhelmedness), means that my short-lived motivated sprints of useful activity are usually followed by feelings of utter despair.  And then tears.  And then arm waving.  And then Pinterest.

Did I mention I found the cutest little table on Craigslist this afternoon?  No, really - I did. 

My current life, stuck in a moving-from-one-house-to-another limbo, is nothing but a series of popped bubbles of useless emotion.  None of which is helping me pack, none of which is helping me clean, and none of which is going to accomplish a single darn thing.

And so I go into tomorrow clinging to the advice that I give regularly to my four-year-old son. 

"I think I can."     "I think I can."    "I think I can."   "I think I can."        
 "I think I can."      "I think I can!"

Here's hoping that come morning, my little blue engine will finally be able to lug its oversized caboose over the crest of that mountain.  That, my friends, would be perfect indeed.

Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 
(Clinging to this promise with all my heart!)