Keep a Quiet Heart About It

I felt compelled to pick up Elizabeth Elliot's book "Keep a Quiet Heart" this morning. In 1998 I read it along with several girlfriends in my youth group, and the time impacted and shaped my growth in many ways.

The very first page has this quote, which I think I am going to have to print and frame or keep on the bathroom mirror or the refrigerator--or both:

"I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one's work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true work--one's work for God--consists on doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day--the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it."

--Annie Keary, 1825-1879

Oh, Lord, help me. The part that struck me with conviction the most upon reading this is the phrase "getting selfish over one's work". I realize that the work that I do and that I get so stressed about is more about me and my day than it is about it being a service to my family. If my family interferes with my chores, then what does it say about my priorities? It bears repeating: Oh, Lord, help me.