there you go...

this was sent to me from someone from church in an email. i thought it was good enough to put on my blog. usually i just delete those church emails. ha ha

ARE YOU ON OVERLOAD ? PARABLE OF THE TOWELS

When my husband and I taught our children to do laundry, we started them out on the towels. Towels are easy to do: they're simple to sort, they don't have to be matched up in pairs, and they have No pockets that might be hiding nasty surprises like ballpoint pens or brown crayons or lip balm, any of which even a perfectly capable, laundry-seasoned adult can accidentally overlook in a wash cycle.


There is, however, one common mistake that my children (and even their father) tend to make with towels. They figure that as long as they can keep smashing those towels into the washing machine, they can keep adding more and more to the load.


One day I was working in the kitchen when I heard a horrendous noise emanating from the laundry room in the basement. I rushed down to check it out and found the washer groaning and rocking like a crazed cow. Quickly switching it off, I opened the lid and saw a wash of towels, crammed in so tightly I could barely pry them out. Now, I have a large-capacity machine, but it was never meant to hold fourteen, full -size bath towels!


Sure, there were fourteen towels that needed washing that day. But as nice as it would have been to be able to throw then in all at once and get it over with, the washer simply doesn't work that way. All you're doing when you try to stuff that many towels into one load is ruining both the machine and the towels. An overloaded washing machine is thrown out of balance and can't do its job properly.


I understand this principle and have explained it with infinite patience to my husband and to each of my five children in turn. But I still haven't become very adept at applying it in the larger scheme of my life. Believe me---it does apply. I'm always falling prey to notions that I can get one more thing into the load. This is probably because there is always more to accomplish than I have time or energy to do. I am a fourteen-towel woman stuck in a ten-towel-capacity life. And so I tend to operate frequently on overload.


Almost every woman I know is like this. We are really busy! We overload our days with things that truly need to be done and then drop into bed at night wondering why we feel so out of balance. We need to realize that it's better to have ten clean towels in the morning and four set aside for another day than to have fourteen not -so - clean towels and a broken machine. We're in this life for the long haul -- if we don't maintain ourselves properly, we will break down.


-- (Introduction) "Take Two Chocolates and See me in the Morning"


Remember, Moderation in ALL things! Happy New Year!

moderation in all things has always been my motto in life...L