Jan. 8, 2015

Mark 6:31

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, Jesus said to them, “Come with my by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” 

A week ago, I promised myself to write more this year, taking time to capture and reflect upon life. It’s a week later and I’m finally at the computer. I began by opening up the blog I wrote on 1.1.2014. Did I need to read this! Problem is, until this week, I hadn’t been living what I wrote about a year ago. In early 2014, I reflected upon how much had changed in the last 12 months. I could write the same words again12 months later.

The last period of my life has been “full.”  We often say this. Problem is I’m ashamed for letting my life get back to being so overfull. Balancing multiple jobs. Overwhelmed looking at my calendar. Wondering how and why I got myself into this situation.

I am not alone. I think of presidents of companies and countries, people with multiple young children, single parents struggling to make ends meet. Why am I complaining?

What it gets at is what is at the center of my life. What is important. Whose am I? I can do lots of “good” things. Most people have too many good things to choose. The question becomes, “What good things do I give up?”

While not completely intentional, I’ve taken time this week to reflect upon my life, where I’m at, what is important and where I’m going. Today, I realized I’m kind-of having a “boot camp week” with snippets of time to be. I often imagine having a day away to write a life manifesto with specific goals and outcomes for the next period of my life. But it doesn’t happen. Often, life situations change. Expected and unexpected things happen and they affect us. Boot camp periods are needed to reflect, renew and reimagine.

They are also an opportunity to reinstall or reincorporate ways to renew ourselves. I’m back exercising daily, reading, praying and studying God’s word. I’m ashamed an overfull schedule meant those things fell off the radar. I want to create healthy ways to rest and renew myself, rather than less healthy and mindless ways.

My encouragement today is if you are feeling full, overwhelmed or depleted, work some boot camp time into your life. Maybe you can’t take a full day. Ease in a few hours over the next couple of weeks and let yourself be. Our bodies are too busy doing. We need time to just be. Thank goodness Jesus saw this need in his life and in the life of his disciples. Let it be so for me.

Often at the start of a new calendar year, we feel pressure to make a bunch of goals for ourselves. Help us see the more helpful exercise of simply being with you and taking away what you place on our heart and in our minds. Help us find a little boot camp time to just be with you. Amen.

Blessings –

Dianne

If you have enjoyed this blog, please pass it along to someone else who might also enjoy it.