Someone shared an expression with me recently: you can’t ride two horses with one butt. I have tried, sometimes even attempting to ride three or four at once. It begs the question, are any of the horses being ridden as they were intended?

I’ve been feeling ineffective lately… In case you weren’t aware, I retired from job (horse?) number one on October 20th, 2012. Since that time, I’ve been steadily busy with horses two and three, and often find myself wondering where on Earth I even had time for horse one to begin with! Rather, I’ve been slowly trying to find what baseball players call “The Sweet Spot”.

Granted, I’m not a baseball fan, but growing up in a big baseball town, even I know what the sweet spot is. It’s the area on a bat where the ball makes the most effective contact, and goes the farthest
distance, with the least amount of vibrational sting on the batter’s hands. The Sweet Spot.

Yesterday I sent a text to my cousin. She’s amazingly tolerant of me, I have to give her credit. My message started off like this: “So I’m thinking of selling off my two horses and becoming a goat farmer.” (Insert wild laughter from 1,000 miles away.) She responds sweetly, “And what would the goat be?”

Even she knows I’m not a goat kind of girl. You see, it all stemmed from two recent events. One, I still haven’t been able to call my friend Lori back and thank her for the business opportunity she tried to give me this past weekend. We were going to be traveling so I wasn’t able to make it, but just having her ask meant the world to me! And then one of my travelers cancelled all of her dining reservations, which ultimately meant they leaned on another person to help them with that, not their trusty travel planner. Oh the horror! How woefully inadequate am I? Good gravy Karen, can’t you get anything right? You retired from an entire JOB and you can’t handle things now? Maybe neither of these are right for me either. Maybe I should take up goats.

Then some 3:00 AM soul-searching got me thinking… how often do we give up on things because we feel ineffective, or feel like a failure ready to throw in the towel completely when really, we just haven’t found our sweet spot? Is it a business venture, something with our kids, or with our spouses? Sometimes I think Satan leads us to that way of thinking so he can thwart whatever plan God has for us… just before we’ve found our sweet spot.

Maybe I’m not ineffective. No, I didn’t get to call my wonderful friend Lori back yet on that business deal she was trying to bless me with. And yes, my traveling client did just erase all of my reservations I’d made for her. But that doesn’t mean I need to send one horse off to the glue factory, or give up both horses in favor of goats. It doesn’t mean my horses aren’t right for me.

In life, and for me, it just means I’m still figuring out the best way to be effective as a career woman and provider for my family, as a vacation planner, as a team leader, and as a purse lady, as my daughter so sweetly puts it. Still looking for my sweet spot.

Philippians 3:12-14 tells us to hang in there when we’re ready to give up our horses and start farming goats. “12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. ” Even Paul, one of Jesus’s disciples sometimes felt as if he’d missed the mark. Rather than give up, he recognized that he was still in the race, and putting one foot in front of the other, he could press on and keep going until all of his jobs on earth were done. The same is true for us. Just hang in there. Hop back on those horses, whatever they may be, and ask God to help you find your sweet spot before you head off on some wild goat-farming adventure that may not be God’s will for you. You’ll get there soon if you don’t give up!

Prayer: Lord, sometimes I feel like I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I know you do. Thank you for your daily blessings that help me use the talents you’ve given me and the places you’ve placed me in the ways that you need. Help me find that sweet spot in my life so that I can be more effective in my everyday walk. ~Amen

(If you stumbled onto this page and don’t know who God is, or haven’t gotten to that place where you trust Him to help you through everyday life, please talk to me. I’ll be glad to introduce you to Him!)