**The Best Yes**

I recently read this book and it completely changed my life.

There was so much great advice from Lysa. I have commonly felt rushed in my life and pulled in too many directions. This book talked about how there is many things we can commit to, but that we need to figure out what is the BEST YES to give our time and energy to.

“We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. “

A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul.

I blindly live at the mercy of the requests of others that come my way each day. Every assignment feels like my assignment.

You need me?  You got me.

Because I’m too scared or too cowardly or too busy or too something to just be honest and say, “I can’t this time”.

We must not confuse the command to love with the desire to please.

In God’s plan, you’ve got a part to play.

If you know it and believe it, you’ll live it.

You’ll live your life making decisions with the Best Yes as your best filter.

You’ll be a grand display of God’s Word lived out.

Your undistracted love will make your faith ring true.

Your wisdom will help you make decisions that will still be good tomorrow.

And you’ll be alive and present for all of it.

When all of life feels like an urgent rush from one demand to another, we become forgetful.

We forget simple things like where we put our car keys or that one crucial ingredient for dinner when we run into the grocery store. But even more disturbing, we forget God. We say with our mouths that we are trusting and relying on God, but are we really?

A quick check to see if this is true is our ability to notice what God wants us to notice and our willingness to participate when God invites us to participate.

Other people’s requests dictate the decisions we make. We become slaves to other’s demands when we let our time become dictated by requests. We will live reactive lives instead of proactive. And reactive lives get very exhausting, very quickly. We get requests. We fill up our schedules all the way to the limit. We leave very little white space. We live lives that exhaust us.

A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul. An underwhelmed soul is one who knows there is more God made her to do. She longs to do that thing she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about.

The decisions we make dictate the schedules we keep.

The schedules we keep determine the lives we live.

The lives we live determine how we spend our souls.

So, this isn’t just about finding time.

This is about honoring God with the time we have.

Never is a woman so fulfilled as when she chooses to underwhelm her schedule so she can let God overwhelm her soul.

Never despise the mundane. Embrace it. Unwrap it like a gift. And be one of the rare few who looks deeper than just the surface. See something more in the everyday. It’s there. We can learn right here, right now, in the midst of all that’s daily how to become wise.

I’ve learned the best “no” answers are graciously honest. A simple no I will sometimes use is, “While my heart wants to say yes, the reality of my time makes this a no.”  Because I am someone who carries a great desire to make others happy, my heart is usually always jumping up and down demanding, “Say yes! Say yes!” But my brain has learned it must boss my heart around a bit once it checks my schedule, considers my capacity, and understands what is and is not my responsibility.

The difficult moment of saying no is worth it if it helps you avoid being resentful later.

Saying yes all the time won’t make me Wonder Woman. It will make me a worn-out woman.

We dread saying yes but feel powerless to say no. Why?  Because of the elephant called people pleasing?

We are afraid of people not liking us. Not admiring us. Not being pleased with us. So we spend the best of who we are doing a million things we know we aren’t supposed to be doing.

It is impossible to please everyone. And wearing yourself out trying will often make you the unhappiest person in the room.

We fear disappointing people.

When you have a pattern of saying yes when you know you should say no, it’s time to reevaluate some things.

Step back and think about what’s really going on. You said no because saying yes would invite crazy into your life. And you’ve been telling yourself over and over, NO MORE CRAZY. If they push back when you say no, that’s disrespectful on their part. And if you play along, it’s dysfunctional on your part.

You won’t ever be able to keep up with unrealistic. Unrealistic demands lead to undercurrents of failure. So don’t allow the unrealistic demands of others to march freely into your life.

Those who constantly try to impress others will quickly depress themselves. That’s not love.

We must not confuse the disease to please with the command to love.

For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose love, their hearts are fully committed to him.

The sooner we can make peace with the facts we can’t please everyone and some people won’t be pleased no matter what, the sooner we can be freed from that elephant sitting on our air hose. We’ll have the oxygen and the energy to simply and generously love. After all, love, real love, is a very Best Yes.

Saying no isn’t an unnecessary rejection. It’s actually a necessary protection of our Best Yes answers.

Whenever you say yes to something, there is less of you for something else. Make sure your yes is worth the less.

Together is a really good word. Together is what we need when we hit tough patches in life. Making decisions when life is making you cry shouldn’t be done alone.

Friend, you are strong. You are persevering, tough, able to bend without breaking, willing to be humbled to the point of humiliation, not blinded, a hunter for wisdom, a praying-through-it woman, a courageous gal, one who wants to learn the deep dependence of following hard after God himself. From that cracked-open-heart place, a God-breathed strength will rise. Rise. Rise. And help you spit in Satan’s face as you declare, “You picked the wrong woman to mess with this time!”