Whats your red flag of self care?

One of my very wise friends said what is it that you notice not happening when you stop caring for yourself. What is a red flag that goes off when you notice that life is a mess?

It may seem weird but it is my personal email account. When I have more than 3 emails in the inbox on my personal account that are unread I know life has been crazy. My personal email account does not get many written emails from friends or family, some yes but they usually are a quick reply but mostly this account gets devotions, leadership training tools and inspirational messages. When these are not read and left in my inbox I know that I have not taken time for me lately. That has been the past two weeks. Things have been consistently moving parts and the me time is the first to go.

The other red flag is “Do I make my bed in the morning?”. Yes, many of the mornings I have made my bed this week but it has been half way completed. Pillows have been skewed and other covers may remain on the floor or other options. This is what happens when life seems to slip out of my grip.

For Andrew it is clothes on the floor. When he has had a stressful week there is not an item of clothes that remains off the floor or off his bed in his room and he ends up sleeping on his couch instead of his bed.

At first for all of us we don’t notice these slips. It is the little thing here and there we don’t catch then all of a sudden it is right in our face and it is something we have to deal with. I opened my to go container cabinet and it was busting at the seams. This had to finally be taken care of and cleaned out. (This is the junk-y picture.) My mom found my grocery list buried on my table under other paperwork and she went and picked up my groceries and had dinner in the crock pot for me to be able to come home and not have to think. (thanks mom)  

Friends, parents, family know when we are at our breaking point. Sometimes they let us break and then are there to pick us up because sometime we need that, other times they stop us in our tracks force us to take time out of the day (the last thing we want) and force us to stare our fear, our problem, our failure in the face. This initially hurts, stings and makes us even weaker at the knees however many if not most of the times when we face them we realize that the fears were bigger than we thought and we had made issues a bigger problem than it should have been. There are many ways they bring us to face fears but they never leave our side. May we be that friend and family member to walk with others through life and may we be there to provide encouragement when others are low and others to provide encouragement for us.

If you need encouragement and you don’t feel like others are being that for you here it is. Remember you are stronger than you think you are, you can do anything for 10 seconds and you are capable to achieve more than you think no matter what obstacle comes your way. You may not make it the first time but you will make it keep pushing and trying.