You may know who they are, and you may be the one with a cat toying with you as a mouse, the devil is roughly playing and enjoying the torment of the wearing down until it’s easy to take them out.

I have had a very rough year and I am not putting my hardships above anyone else. I started to realize over the past two days there is a strategy being used against some people. I am usually sensitive to other’s sufferings but I have been unusually overwhelmed so that I can barely handle my own stuff let alone someone else’s. That is the strategy.

The devil is a Mastermind of strategies and why take out only one when he can affect two, or even three…

While some people in my life are undergoing heavy blows I am being detained elsewhere and put in a hold. You may be facing this too.

We can make excuses for our busyness but the truth is we are called to serve. I had to repent for my mistake and apologize to some people. Allow this to be my apology if I owe it to you.

I had to recognize that I may not be able to everything but I can do something, and it is wrong wording to say “all I can do is pray” when that is probably the most powerful thing we CAN do. No one should be too busy to pray!

I was remembering Paul in prison and how fear and whatever else kept people who could have, and probably even should have, from visiting him in his desperate times at his end.

While I have had a lot of hardship in my year, I began to look at my mom laying in a bed in a nursing home. She didn’t want to be there. I assure you its the last place she would choose to be. She didn’t want to fall, didn’t want to be incapacitated having no ability to use an arm and a leg! She didn’t want to miss her favorite season and the fun of the holiday preparations she enjoys. She didn’t want to lay waiting while people called off work and make a place short-staffed and crabby. She didn’t want to be alone this holiday while others did their merry things…

I see the strategy where my visiting her regularly was an occupying joy to her long lonely days and how my passing out and being sick and weak through this holiday week was in fact being used against her and others who need us.

People need us!
We can’t be so busy with seasonal things or life in general that we forget people. We may have to restructure our priorities when wrapping gifts takes more value than being a gift.

Or when we visit places where many are and there is someone alone…

We may need to be mindful that there are people in desperate need of who we are or something we have and we get detained in busyness and thereby withhold from them.

May this NEW Year bring a structuring of priorities and putting people before things, and needs before wants.

Pour out for others. If your bucket gets empty, go refill and come back. Don’t forget to come back!

God bless what we set our hands to and our awareness there may be someone who needs you more than whatever has you tied up and busy.

Go fill your bucket and readily pour out by serving in order to fulfill the law and…

Love One Another,

Alana