This past week, I was given an opportunity to foster three adorable one week old kittens. An easy yes right? Who wouldn’t love nursing to health tiny furballs. Lucky for me, a good and wise friend talked me out of it before I actually took them in. You see, I was at the edge of my limits, I just couldn’t see it yet.
 
We like to ignore them, but you and I have limits to what we can handle or do. We aren’t Superman. Even Superman had limits, they were just unique to him. It can be easiest to overstep our limits when it seems someone is in need or it is something only we can do, but if we give in to these urges, we won’t only hurt ourselves, but also be of no use to others.
 
Not only does going over our limits hurt others, but it also hurts our relationship with God. Typically, when we overfill our life, God is the first to go. Even if we retain some sort of prayer life, it cannot be as fruitful if we are stretched in a million directions. We become more focused on saying the prayers and doing the “things” rather than focusing on where they lead us.
 
We can also overstep our limits in our prayer life. With good intentions, it is easy to make a goal that is way too lofty to attain. This is why there is an expression typically used during Lent, “Keep it simple stupid.” This is because we aren’t just trying to add things to our prayer life for a one minute fix, we need to be in it for the long haul. If we add in too much at once we are more likely to end up stopping everything at once too. Fr. Andrew Budzinski from our diocese once gave a reflection that the way to pray the rosary daily isn’t by taking it up all at once; we do it one decade at a time. Start praying a decade of the rosary every day. Once we have that down, add another decade, then another, then before we know it we aren’t just praying a daily rosary, we are doing so in a way that we can continue to maintain. Remember, we are first called to make every action a prayer, not to overwhelm ourselves with prayer and then struggle more in our relationship with God.
 
While saying no to ourselves or others can be incredibly difficult, it is also the most fruitful, provided that God has led us to that no. I didn’t want to admit that bottle feeding baby kittens was too much for me right now, but it was, and my life is better off by saying no. A few days later, I found something I could handle and say yes to, a three month old kitten just needing to recuperate from surgery. I ended up doing what we call “foster failing” by falling madly in love and keeping her for myself. If I hadn’t respected my limits on who I could say yes to and help, I wouldn’t have little Joan to snuggle up on me each night. Maybe most of our yes’s or no’s don’t have such a rewarding end and obvious side effect, but they are still helping grow us into the people God is calling us to become. By respecting ourselves, we respect the God who made us.