This summer I took a personal oath to live more consciously. Summer is always a ‘busy season’ for us, but I also desperately wanted this summer to be different — not a resounding gong of busy.
Living consciously is hard and something I’m still working at everyday.
It’s why I’ve dropped from two posts a week here, to one. It’s why it might take me a couple days to respond to your messages and emails. It’s why you see less of my ‘real time’ moments in my Instagram stories. It’s why I’m almost completely disconnecting on the weekends.
Because truth be told, I tend to give the best of me to my group fitness classes, my work, my 24 hr email response time…which ends up leaving my family, the ones I love the most, with the most burnt out version of me — a loud clanging cymbal that marches through the house after a long day.
I want to live consciously because I want my everyday life, the day to day, to be as happy as the moments you do see on Instagram and this blog. And it’s working.
Shauna Niequist says it best in her devotional, Savor.
And I think anyone who runs an online business can relate to this, ‘I know plenty of people who give the very best of themselves to what they’re putting on the internet…and their family get scraps. I know that there is never enough time, never enough energy, never enough of everything to go around…But the best of me is not in my books and not on my blog. The best of me is what I give to my husband, our boys, our families, our dear friends. In a season that sometimes feels stretched to breaking, I won’t allow them to suffer. My first priority is and will always be my real life.’
I love the internet, the online business it’s allowed me to create, the people it’s allowed me to connect with — I love it all. But the internet doesn’t get the best of me; no, the best of me is for God, my family, and close friends.
Dear God,
Make me brave enough to drown out the sounds of the clashing cymbal; alive enough to live consciously.
So that the best of me is not on the internet; rather the best of me is what I give to you and to my family.
This post does include an affiliate link to Shauna Niequist’s devotional, Savor. I do receive a small commission for products purchased using this link. Thank you for supporting the brands that make the content you see on Nourish Move Love possible.