Prioritization: The Grief of Giving Up

My heart filled with sorrow as I drove to the grocery store, and anger. No, no one had died. No one had even gotten hurt. I just wasn't getting to do what I wanted. I wasn't getting to do what I wanted how I wanted. I was prioritizing and I believed that I was putting the most important things first, but I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

My husband told me the night before that I needed to give some things up. Everything wasn't a priority. He wasn't wrong. I had told him my plate was too full, and his reply was that I needed to take some things off of it. A logical answer. But I didn't want it.

There is grief in giving things up, even if that's what I need to do. I don't think anyone ever told me that when they taught me about prioritizing. They said to do the important things. They made it sound easy to give up the "unimportant" things. They didn't tell me that I'd be attached to those things, that I'd want them almost as much, or more as I wanted the "important things." That I'd grieve.

So there I sat in my car, alternately sad and angry. Sad because I was giving things up. Angry because I didn't want to. Judging myself for getting so bent out of shape for such "little things." But that's life for you. It's never as easy as "they" make it out to be. It's hard. It's filled with grief, little "g" grief and big "G" Grief. And grief has to co-exist with priorities. I'm just now learning that.