{"id":1246,"date":"2015-05-15T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2015-08-21T15:33:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T20:33:47","slug":"taking-care-of-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/2015\/05\/15\/taking-care-of-each-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Care of Each Other"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m honored to be writing for (in)courage today,<\/a> sharing my heart about friendship and learning to receive care from those who love us. The article starts below, but you can link straight to (in)courage here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a><\/p>\n

It had been a particularly difficult week, and after a short trip to visit my parents, I was dreading the return to \u201creal life\u201d\u2014a life that I loved but one that currently felt like more than I could handle.<\/strong> We were trying to get our house on the market\u2014a house we would already be losing money on\u2014and had experienced multiple setbacks. I had been sick, the bitterly cold winter was relentless, and my daughter was having trouble sleeping. I was tired, emotionally shot, and worried about our finances with the house.<\/p>\n

Still, I had to return to my life, difficult or not. But when I turned the key to our front door, what I found surprised me. It was cleaner than I\u2019d left it! I opened a card on the table and discovered why: my friend Katie had cleaned, left dinner in the fridge, and stuck notes on surfaces throughout the house\u2014notes that reminded me of my value in Christ and His love for me.<\/p>\n

I was overwhelmed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because I felt\u2014how else can I say it?\u2014I felt taken care of<\/em>.<\/strong> There is no other way to articulate why Katie\u2019s actions meant so much to me. She had cleaned my house\u2014the house I felt responsible to clean. She had provided dinner for my family\u2014the meal I felt responsible to cook. And she had reminded me that my value was not in what I did, but in whose I was\u2014Christ\u2019s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a wife, mom, and teacher, most of my days are spent taking care of others. I rub backs, prepare meals, kiss cheeks, tie shoes, wash dishes, mentor students, write checks, grade papers and give lectures\u2014along with a hundred other things. I can guess that you do numerous things, too. You may not be grading papers or preparing meals, but you\u2019re probably caring for others somehow. You\u2019re probably taking care of those around you.<\/p>\n

I think that, as women, we are used to being the nurturers, the ones who take care of others.<\/p>\n

But how often do we let others take care of us? How often do we ask<\/em> others to take care of us?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please click over and read the rest of the article here, at (in)courage<\/a>! You can also sign up\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to receive free daily encouragement from the writers of (in)courage, right in your inbox!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m honored to be writing for (in)courage today, sharing my heart about friendship and learning to receive care from those who love us. The article starts below, but you can link straight to (in)courage here! It had been a particularly difficult week, and after a short trip to visit my parents, I was dreading the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,20,4,21,5,96,133],"tags":[501,502,34,505,218,503,52,506,500,498,499,497,504],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about","category-friendship","category-god","category-guest-post","category-life","category-motherhood-2","category-parenting","tag-am-i-valuable","tag-do-i-have-value","tag-faith","tag-i-feel-so-tired","tag-incourage","tag-incourage-writer","tag-jesus","tag-my-soul-feels-tired","tag-our-value-is-in-christ","tag-our-value-is-in-who-we-are","tag-our-value-is-in-whom-we-belong-to","tag-our-value-is-not-in-what-we-do","tag-writing-for-incourage","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/20150430-Swindell-Value.jpg?fit=652%2C435&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}