Do you ever wish you could just hit the Pause button on life and catch your breath? Between the bombing in Boston, the explosion in West and the shooting in Robinson, my heart is heavy this week. And yet, there are still end-of-semester deadlines at school, fiscal year-end deadlines at work, field trip forms to sign, overdue library books to locate, laundry to fold, dishes to wash, and the gas tank just dinged “Empty.” The world doesn’t slow down just because I need a breather, so sometimes, I have to carve out time and allow myself to refocus – emotionally, physically and even spiritually.

We’ve been talking the past few weeks about our purpose and calling in life. I used to have my life all planned out, ya know. I was going to marry that cute boy from middle school, live in a mansion with its own library (and a ladder on wheels), have two boys and two girls (so they wouldn’t fight, because my children were going to be perfectly behaved) and travel the world in my free time. Once I realized that those dreams were, perhaps, a wee bit unrealistic, I decided that I would be a foreign missionary (at least I could do the travel-the-world part of my plan, and it seemed less materialistic than living in a mansion).

Yet, here am I today, just about as clueless as I was back then. As I try to figure out my place in God’s plan, I am driven by passages of Scripture like Galatians 5:13-18:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom … My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness (MSG).

We can only function for so long in “survival mode.” If you are like me and need a breather from all the stress around us these days, I encourage you to put Galatians 5 in action: find ways to serve and reach out to others who are hurting. It’s amazing what such acts of kindness will do for your own burdened heart.