There are many things I love about living and working in community but there are some things that are challenging and often times hard about it as well. I am a somewhat sensitive person, OK, I am a highly-sensitive person! This creates great difficulty for me when living in community because I am aware of so much going on and become over-stimulated very quickly.
To those of you who are not easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of things happening around you......enjoy your sense of calm. Because for those of us highly-sensitive types......life with lots happening around us tends to create sensory overload and the only solution I have found to relieve some of that pressure is removing the stimulus.
So living in community is wonderful because I get to speak into so many lives and see people change and grow. However, I have to work hard at not taking other people's responsibilities on myself. I call them responsibilities but sometimes they are issues or challenges.
Living with Fran and Jim in Thunder Bay was such a blessing to me and one of the lasting lessons I have taken from there, is about responsibilities. I have been working for years on carrying only my responsibilities (monkeys) on my back. In our house in Thunder Bay we often asked each other what monkeys were on the other's back. We carry our own and sometimes (unhealthily) we carry somebody else's.
So we have to chuck those monkeys that are not our challenges/responsibilities/issues off our backs.
They tend to cling and we tend to grab them back but we have to keep throwing them off.
Living in community offers me many times a day to practise this discipline of only carrying what is mine through life.....and really Jesus gives me the strength to do that.
So many people have heard me say.....get that monkey off your back, that's not your responsibility.
What monkeys am I carrying today? Which ones are mine? Which are not mine?
Throwing those monkeys off that are not mine, is healthy, and allows me to lessen the overwhelming feeling of living with so much and so many around me.
Today what monkeys are you carrying? Which ones are yours? Which ones are not?
Time to throw those monkeys that are not yours off your back!
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