Equipping young women professionals with young families to find fulfillment, contentment and joy as mothers and home makers without losing sight of who they are as women.

Volume 12, Issue 36: Not Every Assignment Is Your Assignment

I recently had two funerals in my extended family for which I didn't travel upcountry for the burials which took place on two Saturdays, one after the other. I attended the funeral service in the city, but I didn't make the 9-hours' one-way road trip to the country side for the burials.

With the help of others, I at first felt a little guilty for not going for the burials. Even though the guilt did not grip me for a long moment, it still crossed my mind that it looked bad on me that others, including distant relatives made the time to go but I didn't.

What helped me shake off the guilt quickly was that I was more than aware of the fatigue I was working under, trying to wrap up a phase of work that was coming to an end in less than two weeks. I understood that with all I had on my plate, I didn't have the physical and emotional resources to make the long trips. I knew I needed to conserve my energy for the work I had to finish well in limited time.

Going for those burials would have been a good thing to do, a loving and Christian thing to do. But it wasn't the right time for me to do them. As unloving as it may sound, I now know without a doubt that they were not my assignments.

Around the same time, a friend of mine asked if I could bake and decorate a cake for her son's birthday, to which I quickly said 'No'. I also usually bake a birthday cake for my twin salonists for their September birthday, but this time I decided to postpone the bake to October. I admitted to myself that I was too overstretched to invest physical and emotional resources to all it takes to put together a cake.

Reading Lysa Terkeurst's "The Best Yes" book this week, I have figured out why in some instances I say "No" to requests to give or go or do or host. What I didn't realize when I turned down those requests is that I first analyzed my ability to accommodate them financially, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Some requests pass three of the four dimensions. But a "Best Yes" for me is one that passes all the four dimensions.

Not all assignments are your assignments. In some cases, they are assignments that you could take up if the timing was right. I have gleaned from Lysa's book that we should only take up assignments for which we will be able to walk in love as we do them. When we fill our plates with too many assignments at the same time, it compromises our ability to walk in love.

“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. 1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:3 MSG‬‬.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi