As the holiday season draws near, are you in a panic doing everything to provide a perfect Christmas this year? You have good intentions to make this Christmas extra special, but you're worn out from the overwhelm - feeling pressured to do more, trying to fit everything in, or exceeding every expectation.

Gratitude is easy when we have all the warm, feel-good moments that surround the holidays and when the driver ahead pays for your chai tea latte in the Second Cup drive thru, but what about the rest of the year? Gratitude is more than just a fleeting feeling of thankfulness, it’s an intentional shift in perspective, a heart posture that can transform the mundane into meaningful, the chaos into calm, and the overwhelmed into overjoyed.

It’s not a matter of if overwhelm hits you, but when. The most frustrating part is you don’t know what’s causing it or why you feel so worn out. It feels like you’re stuck on a hamster wheel, spinning out of control. The demands of life can be overwhelming. Often, it takes more energy trying to figure out what triggered this off-balance, helpless, guilty feeling.

There’s a lot of pressure when the clock changes from December 31st to January 1st on how to make this year the best year yet. It can get overwhelming. What if instead of adding more things to our already full plates, we remove the stuff that isn’t adding value to our lives to make more room for the important things that matter?

Do you feel like a failure? That was how I felt at the age of 28, with 17 jobs under my name. I heard that I wasn’t “a good fit” a handful of times and felt that way deep within my heart even more.

Marriage is a gift from God. It’s held as precious and new in the early stages guarding with care, then kids and life happens over the years; the union that was once held so dear has understandably and easily dropped to the back burner. There is nothing wrong with your marriage, but it’s not exactly where we want it to be.

Perhaps you’ve heard them too? “Where is God in all this”, “How could a good God let this be happening”, and “Why isn’t God stopping this” are a few examples of the taunting questions that float in my head and keep me up at night.