Little Wren Writes

Sometimes everything feels important at once. Not just one thing.

Everything.

The email I haven’t answered. The decision I need to make. The conversation I’ve been avoiding. The washing. The thing happening next week. The thing that happened three years ago that my brain has apparently decided we urgently need to reconsider at 10pm. The person I’m worried about. The future I can’t predict. The task I’ve forgotten. The task I’m worried I’ve forgotten but cannot actually remember.

Overwhelm is remarkably efficient. It can take twelve completely manageable things and present them to me simultaneously until I become incapable of doing any of them. At which point I usually do something extremely productive. Like stare at my phone. Or make tea. Tea now features heavily in my emotional management strategy – there are worse systems I guess.

I’ve been thinking about overwhelm lately. About what actually happens when my brain decides everything needs my attention at once. My world gets very small. All I can see is what needs fixing. What needs deciding. What needs organising. What might go wrong. What I haven’t done. What I should be doing. Even good things become heavy when I’m trying to carry all of them simultaneously. And that’s the thing about overwhelm. It doesn’t necessarily mean my life is terrible…sometimes it just means my life is full.

Full of people I care about.
Responsibilities that matter.
Decisions that need making.
Work I want to do well.
Relationships I want to nurture.
Things I’m excited about.
Things I’m grieving.
Things I’m still figuring out.

Sometimes overwhelm isn’t one enormous crisis. It’s seventeen perfectly reasonable things all asking for a chair at the same table.

And there are only so many chairs.

I’ve spent much of my life believing that if I could just become organised enough, I would eventually conquer overwhelm.

Better calendars. Better systems. Better routines. Better lists. Perhaps colour coding. (Definitely colour coding – I do love a good system.) And systems help (when I can stick to them of course).

But I’ve discovered something slightly offensive: I still have limits.

No planner has yet managed to remove my need for sleep. No to-do list has created a 27-hour day. No amount of organisation has made me capable of being everywhere, caring for everyone, doing everything and remembering all of it.

Rude. But probably important.

Overwhelm often reveals something I’d rather forget:

I am finite.

I have a body.
I need sleep.
I need food.
I need rest.
I can only have one conversation at a time.
I can only live one day at a time.
I cannot solve Thursday while living Tuesday.

And apparently God is completely unsurprised by this. He made me this way.

That’s where I’ve started rediscovering the gift of the ordinary. Ordinary isn’t a word we usually get excited about. Nobody announces, “You will not BELIEVE the incredibly average Tuesday I’ve just had.”

We celebrate milestones. Birthdays. Weddings. Promotions. Holidays. Big decisions. Big adventures. Big answers to prayer.

And we should.

But most of a human life isn’t made of big moments. It’s made of ordinary ones.

Breakfast.
Driving to work.
Making a cup of tea.
Making dinner.
Putting petrol in the car.
Answering messages.
Watering plants.
Making another cup of tea.
Talking to a friend.
Doing the washing.
Making a 6th cup of tea.
Going to bed.
Waking up.
Doing it again.

And I’m beginning to think I’ve underestimated the holiness of those things.

Jesus spent most of His earthly life doing things the Bible barely tells us about. We know a little about His birth. We get one story from when He was twelve. And then…Years. Almost nothing. Jesus lived approximately thirty years before beginning the public ministry we spend most of our time reading about.

Thirty years of ordinary life. Meals. Work. Family. Synagogue. Friendship. Walking familiar roads. Helping in a workshop. Sleeping. Waking. Praying. Living.

I find that strangely comforting.

The Son of God didn’t consider ordinary human life beneath Him. He entered it. He spent years in it. There were no crowds watching most of those days. No miracles recorded. No sermons preserved. No Gospel writer saying,:

“And on Tuesday Jesus completed several administrative tasks and remembered to buy milk.”

Just ordinary faithfulness.

If thirty quiet years weren’t wasted in the life of Jesus, maybe my quiet days aren’t wasted either.

I think I have sometimes treated ordinary life like the waiting room for my real life.

Once I get through this season…
Once this problem is solved…
Once I feel better…
Once I know what the future looks like…
Once I have enough money…

Then I’ll really live.

But life keeps stubbornly happening now. While things remain unresolved. While there are unanswered questions. While the washing basket somehow continues reproducing. While I’m still ‘becoming’.

The ordinary doesn’t wait for life to be sorted. It simply arrives each morning. And says, “Here is today.” Not next month. Not five years from now. Today. What will you do with it?

There’s a prayer Jesus taught His disciples that I’ve said countless times. “Give us today our daily bread.”

Daily bread. Not a five-year supply. Not enough answers to guarantee everything will be okay. Not a detailed explanation of the future. Just what is needed for today.

There’s something almost frustrating about the way God so often works like that. I would prefer the five-year supply. Preferably labelled. Possibly in a spreadsheet.

But Scripture is full of daily dependence. Manna that came each morning. Mercies that are new each morning. A pillar of cloud for today’s journey. Daily bread. Grace for today. God seems deeply committed to meeting His people in the present while I am usually trying to meet Him three months from now.

Overwhelm drags me into every possible tomorrow. What if this happens? What about that? How will I manage? What will I do? The ordinary brings me back. What is actually in front of me? Eat something. Have a shower. Answer this email. Go for a walk. Pray. Go to bed.

There is something almost disappointingly unremarkable about it. I want the grand strategy – often what I need is lunch.

Elijah discovered something similar. He reached the point where he was completely spent and collapsed under a broom tree. And God’s first response wasn’t a theological lecture. It wasn’t a five-step plan for emotional resilience.

Elijah slept. An angel gave him food. Then he slept again. Then there was more food.

Honestly, as divine interventions go, it’s wonderfully practical.

Sleep.
Snack.
Repeat.

Only then did the journey continue. Sometimes spiritual wisdom looks surprisingly ordinary.

I am slowly (excruciatingly so) learning that I don’t have to solve my whole life every morning. I don’t have to know what I’m doing six months from now in order to live faithfully today. I don’t have to carry tomorrow’s grief before it arrives. I don’t have to complete every task before I’m allowed to rest. I don’t have to turn every ordinary day into something meaningful enough to post about – I know! Wild statement to read considering how often I tend to post.

Some days can just be days. And there is freedom in that.

Because God is not only the God of enormous moments.
He’s the God of breakfast.
The God of school runs.
The God of busy train commutes.
The God of dishes.
The God of conversations nobody else hears.
The God of small acts of faithfulness nobody applauds.
The God of Tuesday afternoon with a cup of tea.

He’s present in all of it.

Maybe that’s why Jesus says “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

I appreciate the realism of that last sentence. Jesus doesn’t say, “Don’t worry! Tomorrow will be wonderful!”

He essentially says, “Tomorrow has its own problems. You don’t need to borrow them.”

That’s much more useful. There is enough grace for today. Enough mercy for today. Enough strength for today. And when tomorrow becomes today, there will be grace there too.

I don’t always believe that easily. Overwhelm still arrives. My mind still races ahead. I still occasionally decide at an unreasonable hour that now would be an excellent time to reassess my entire life.

But I’m learning to come back. To this room. This meal. This conversation. This prayer. This breath. This day.

The ordinary is not an interruption to the important parts of my life.

The ordinary is my life.

And maybe faithfulness is much smaller than I’ve sometimes imagined. Maybe it’s simply receiving the day God has actually given me instead of trying to live all the days that haven’t arrived yet. So when everything feels enormous, I’m trying to ask a smaller question.

Not: “How am I going to manage all of this?”

How am I going to manage all of this?”

Just: “What is mine to do today?”

Then I make some tea. Because some spiritual practices are more obvious than others. And I begin.

“Give us today our daily bread.” 
Matthew 6:11