![Can I Live Less Overwhelmed [Episode 2]](https://www.jenniferrothschild.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/09_20_2018_Pod_2_CanILiveLessOverwhelmed.jpg)
On a crisp fall morning, I sat with my precious friend and writing assistant, Karen, in her upstairs office. Phil was out of town, and we planned to work on some new book proposals together.
I had started writing my first book just one year earlier and now found myself on a fast track. I wasn’t sure if I was driving, being driven, or a combination of the two. In addition, my travel schedule had swollen with opportunities that I didn’t feel I could or should turn down.
“What do you guys think of Jennifer Rothschild?”
That was the opening question of a post that I should not have read!
A friend told me she had spotted my name, so I decided to check it out. But, when I read the rest of it, I felt like a balloon when the air is being sucked out of it—deflated and scrawny.
“We’re overcome with deep sadness to be at this point.”
That was my friend’s response to the hard place she and her husband had found themselves.
Her beloved mother had been in and out of institutions because of mental illness and now, they had to make a hard, soul-tearing decision about her guardianship.
For years, they rallied, they loved, they emptied their savings for the best treatment centers, and they fought, trusted, and never gave up hope. And, now they felt like they were giving up her mom to an uncertain future.
Me: “Connor, I’m looking for my phone. I just had it. I can’t find it anywhere! Have you seen it?”
Connor: “Uh, um, Mom, isn’t it in your hand?”
Me: (Alarmed gasp) “Oh! I forgot I was on hold with the doctor’s office!”
Have you ever looked for something without realizing that what you were looking for was already in your hand?
Oh, girl, it happens to all of us! You know, we can search for our sunglasses just to find that they were pushed back on our heads like a hairband. Those are the moments we laugh and wonder why we are becoming our mother! Ha!
As I stood there in the guest room, I panicked.
Even though I’d turned on both dresser lamps, I couldn’t detect any light. Usually, I could recognize at least a little light with my left eye.
I placed my hand on one of the bulbs to make sure it was working. It was warm. If the lamp was on, the problem wasn’t the light bulb.
My heart sank when it hit me.
This could only mean one thing—the few fragments of retina I once had in my left eye were now gone. It’s not like there was real vision there, to begin with, but at least it wasn’t the vast blackness of nothing at all.
Garth Brooks crooned he had friends in “low places.” Girl, we do too.
Life has lots of low places. Hospital waiting rooms, funerals, diminishing bank accounts, hard marriages, illness, and physical limitations are just a few. Low places take us to the bottom of ourselves and leave us feeling down.
Everyone has a low place in their life. Sadly, many of us have had several.
But we’re not alone when it comes to low places. There were many in the pages of Scripture—people who had times when they felt abandoned, scared, and weary.
