One Bite at a Time
"One Bite at a Time"
By, Michelle Gaines
Can I just be real with you for a moment? One of my biggest pet peeves is having both sides of the sink filled with dirty dishes at the same time. I see it and I immediately feel overwhelmed for some reason.
My husband is the same way when the drain rack is full of clean dishes and he is ready to wash dishes.
For whatever reason it seems to throws us off track and causes us to freeze and not move forward with what we know we need to do.
Let’s be honest we can find ourselves becoming so overwhelmed by everything we have to get done. It doesn’t matter if we are men, women, married, single, grandparents, etc… It happens to us all. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if we are not careful.
I remember when my kids were teenagers, I swear I felt like I could not ever get anything done in the house with work, kids schedules, etc… I remember trying to explain to my husband what I was seeing when I looked around and why I was feeling so overwhelmed. I remember finding a little dried bean that had fallen out of the bag. It was laying on the counter in the kitchen. I looked at it and I was like, “that’s it”. I reached down and grabbed a bag of rice from under the counter. I placed the bag on the counter and picked up the dried bean and laid it on the bag. I looked at my husband and said, the rice represents everything I feel like I need to do, and the dried bean represents me. This is why I am feeling so overwhelmed.
The other day we were working on getting the house ready for the kids and grandbabies to come over for the 4th of July. I was talking to my husband about things I wanted to eventually get done in the house over the next few months. I told him I know it probably looks weird that I am doing maybe something in our bedroom today and the living room the next. It might look kind of scattered, but I am having to have tunnel vision. So, that when something comes to mind as a burning desire to get accomplished that’s on my list, I focus on that and nothing else. That way I don’t get so overwhelmed.
Years ago, when I was pregnant with my fourth child, I had bought a cookbook from a co-worker. Her church was selling the cookbook as a fundraiser. Anyway, there were so many great recipes in there (those are some of the best cookbooks in my opinion). They also had some fun little sayings and stories in there too. One of those funny little things in there has always stood out to me. The title was “How to eat an elephant?”. It proceeded to talk about cooking the elephant over a week in a huge pot with seasonings. To cut it up and to eat it one bite at a time.
Now, please know that I have absolutely no desire to cook and eat an elephant. But I could not get away from the last part of it, “to eat it one bite at a time”. I have adopted that term and use it when things seem overwhelming in my, or when I am talking to someone else that is overwhelmed by what’s going on in their lives and everything they need to do. If we can remember the phrase “One bite at a time” it helps us remember that no we can’t do everything all at once, but we can take what we have to do, cut it up and do it one bite at a time. By taking it one bite at a time, it allows us to slow down and breathe, pray for direction to prioritize what we have to do, and sometimes be able to remove things that we didn’t need to have on there in the first place. Before we know it we have accomplished the things that were there that we needed to do.
Now, for those dirty dishes that are driving me nuts I move all out of the sink back behind me on the counter, so they are no longer in my immediate focus. I then bring small batches at a time into the sink to wash. Before I know it, I have gotten that mountain taken care of and washed. That’s how I do one bite at a time for those.
So, remember the next time you are feeling overwhelmed no matter what it is, “How do you eat an elephant”? One bite at a time. Until next time, be blessed!
Here are a few of my favorite go to scriptures when I'm feeling overwhelmed:
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