Today, Friends, I am a victim of Irrational Overwhelm.

Irrational Overwhelm is something I made up so don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it. Let me define my new made up term:

Irrational OverwHELM: the tendency to think, suddenly and without warning or rational explanation, that everything is falling apart, it’s all too hard, and that you are too exhausted to do any of it.

The “without rational explanation” part is the big distinguisher. I mean, you can be rationally overwhelmed – family crisis, illness, money troubles, flood, fire, war – lots and lots of things can fall into this category. These are times when it is fully logical and even expected that you would feel overwhelmed.

But me, today? You know what’s overwhelming me?

The grocery store and figuring out what we should eat this week. And why hasn’t the repairman called me about the chair that’s under warranty that he’s supposed to come fix? And the twin that’s failing math. And the dog’s grooming anxiety.

And unloading the dishwasher.

Now, none of these things should cause alarm or panic. Concern? Sure. Panic? Um, just no.

I am really hoping I am not alone here. And rationally (you know, using the thinky smarty pants part of my brain) I KNOW I’m being ridiculous. And that it will pass.

I don’t know why I’m like this either. But since it’s been happening periodically since I was very young (I think I was 4 the first time I remember the feeling), I feel it’s something to be managed not something to be cured. Maybe this is you, too, sometimes.

So let’s all be there for each other in the Irrational Overwhelm, keep our cool, refrain from yelling at our loved ones, and do what Elisabeth Elliot so famously said .

Do the next thing.

Which she got from an old Saxon poem and the line before it is almost as genius – “without resultings, do the next thing.”

I take that to mean without any assumptions of outcome  – just do it and see what happens.

Cool. I can do that. Off to unload the dishwasher.