The Balancing Act

I was asked to give a speech last night to the Washington County Rotaract club on "How to Balance Life, Work and Community Service." Interesting topic for me, I know, but I used myself as an example of what not to do. I came up with 7 tips to help live a balanced life and thought I would share them...feel free to feed back, I would find a discussion on my points interesting.

7 Tips for a Balanced Life

1. You are in charge of your own time

Many people try to pull you in different directions, but realize that it is up to you to go.

2. Learn to say “No”

It’s okay to say “no”

3. Set your priorities, there are 5 main focus areas in your life

Work/Career
Family/Social
Renewal (Physical, spiritual, emotional, leisure)
Community
Intellectual

4. Know your limits

Get to know yourself and what your capabilities are. Knowing your limits reinforces your ability to say no.

5. Know you cannot “do it all”

When you try to do it all, you generally fail at everything.

6. Health, Exercise and Sleep

Seems like a “no brainer” but often times when we lead an unbalanced life these three things take a back seat first and are generally in this order 1) Health - not eating properly; 2) Exercise - I can skip the gym “just this once”; 3) Sleep - I can stay up late and get this project done, the boss won’t mind if I’m a little groggy

7. Give yourself permission to relax

It is perfectly acceptable to have times in your life when you are not productive.

Growing Up

We all have moments in our lives when we realize we have grown up. But as I’m beginning to realize, we are never totally grown up. Even though I’m only 27 I have had several experiences in the past year that have reminded me I’m not a teenager (or a college goof-off) anymore.

I recently had one of those experiences. While the experience itself was important, for me the most important part was realizing that it was a moment in which I grew as an individual. A defining moment in my life that I will look back upon forever with joy and sorrow. Two very different emotions.

Joy because I’ve grown and maybe helped a couple people around me in the process grow. Joy because something I had been wondering for over 10 years if it would actually happen finally did.

Sorrow because things have changed; relationships that have been one way for a very long time will now be different. Sorrow because I liked the way things were and maybe did not want them to change.

Another emotion felt in the aftermath of the event is inquietude. Inquietude is a fancy word for an uneasiness of either of body or mind. I do not know how everything is going to play out. I may not know for years. I may never know the full extent of how it effects the other people involved.

I think I will be processing this event for the weeks and months to come. Anxiously looking forward to the ways it will change me. The thing that will keep me from ignoring it will be to remember that any opportunity for growth is a good one.

Through a Mirror Darkly

I have been wondering lately if we laugh enough.

A few weeks ago I was at a friend's house playing games and I had a lot of fun. I think we all did, because we laughed a lot. In fact I "laughed until I cried" several times. I left that night feeling refreshed in a way that I had not felt in a long time.

The next day I still felt refreshed. That feeling has since faded and I have once again been worn down by life. The experience prompted me to go back and re-read a section of Telling The Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy and Fairy Tale. I have read this book at least 8 - 10 times over the last four years.

In it the author tells us that it is the truth of life that preachers must preach. He says that preachers must "address themselves to the fullness of who we are and the emptiness too, the emptiness where grace and peace belong but mostly are not, because terrible as well as wonderful things have happened to us all."

What brought me back to the book this time was his discussion on laughter. He says that laughter and tears both come from the same place. That "emptiness where grace and peace belong but mostly are not." Tears are the response to that emptiness and laughter is the antidote to it.

I think that both laughter and tears have the same effect: leaving us feeling drained and refreshed at the same time. They provide a release to the stress, the pain and hardship of life. Both are necessary and important.

Tears, in a way, allow us to admit that life is tragic. Laughter, in a way, allows us to escape from the tragic - if only for a moment.

Laughter gives us hope, in those moments when God seems the most absent, that God can at any moment break through and do the miraculous that only God can do. Just as He did with Abraham and Sarah when he told them that they would have a child in their old age. Just as He did with the disciples when they thought all was lost, Jesus rose from the dead.

Happy Fourth of July

I pray that as we pause to celebrate the birth of America you will find time to thank God for all the blessing in your life.

Be Still

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. Pondering what direction I want my future ministry to take, what direction I want my life to take...what direction God wants to take my life.

I actually sat down to write about my thoughts on ministry. But as I thought about what I wanted to say, my mind took me in a completely different direction. The direction it took me was "stillness"

Being still, as anyone who knows me will attest, is not something I do well. I've always got this thing to do, or that place to go, or this person to meet, or a million other things that keep me running. And when I do get a "free evening" to myself, what do I do? I read a book on music history, I tinker on my computer - there is always something to be done.

And I wonder if that's really healthy (my friends tell me it's not). In seminary, one of my professors spent almost 4 weeks on the subject of a Sabbath rest. There was a lot involved in it, but the main focus was: resting in God. Taking a day, an evening, an hour to do nothing but rest in God.

I can honestly say that is something I do not do enough of. I rush through my devotions at times. I pray while driving - which makes it very difficult to focus on God. I'm now asking myself why. Is it because I have over committed myself, because of my inability to say 'no' or is it because I am scared of what God may have to show me.

In the stillness of resting in God am I afraid of hearing what God might actually want to say to me? How would it change me? How would it affect my plans for life, the ministry and everything?

I honestly do not know. I just know that I do not spend enough time resting in God. That I do not take time to put life on pause and just listen for God to speak to me.

Seeing God

Lately I have been asking myself a question as I am going to bed. That question is: Have I seen God today?

It was inspired oddly enough by the George Straight song “I Saw God Today.” The chorus, which is what really made me think goes:

I’ve been to church, I’ve read the book
I know he’s here but I don’t look
Near as often as I should .. yeah I know I should
His fingerprints are everywhere
I just slowed down to stop and stare
Opened my eyes and man I swear
I saw God today.

I have been asking myself this question because I think it fits well with what I believe. I believe that God is omnipresent, that He is present everywhere at the same time. I also believe that God takes an active role in the history of the universe.

So believing as I do, I think I should be able to everyday ask the question of myself and the answer be ‘yes.’ And if the answer is ‘no’ then I need to ask myself why. Ask myself did God not show Himself to me today or did I not see God in my life today.
Most of the time I can honestly say that it has been because I have not seen God, that I did not look for Him throughout my day.

I got up, grumpy because my alarm went off before I really wanted to get up. I went to work, a job I do not really enjoy, and spent my day counting the hours until I could go home. Finally I go home and I am home just long enough to eat before I have to go somewhere else to do something else. And when I do get home, I read for a few minutes and then go to bed.

Not much time in there for God or rather I did not take the time for God.

So my conclusion, which I think is becoming a theme here, is that I need to make sure that I am taking time for God. That I do not allow my everyday life to weigh me down so much that it distracts me from seeing God.

So I ask you: Have you seen God today?

Come What May - Take 2

I’ve been thinking about my Come What May entry for a while after a comment an agnostic friend gave me about that entry. I completely paraphrase and butcher the actual quote, but the essence of the comment was “the reason Christian’s dont turn to God is not that they don’t believe, it’s that God isn’t real to them in their everyday lives.”

Strangely enough I think he is right. We go to church on Sundays, mid-week if we have time. We might pick up and read our Bible’s during the week if we have time. In truth how many of us take time everyday, without exception, to spend time with God.

To “Practice the Presence of God” as Brother Lawrence would put it.

I began pondering how we as Christians can go about that. The most common is to set time aside everyday to read the Bible and pray. While it is a good and worthy exercise that I truly believe every Christian must be doing, in truth I have to admit, in my life that at times that becomes just another routine activity I do.

And with that thought in mind I picked up a book I purchased a while back and began thumbing through it. The book is Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. It’s not a book that one sits down and reads cover to cover. It truly is a handbook that takes 3-5 pages per discipline and describes the discipline, gives scripture and advice on how to practice it. There are almost 70 disciples that it discusses.

While I may not try all of them, there are some that I have tried in the past and am looking at incorporating in to my spiritual life again. Some new ones I have found that seem to me that they would be beneficial.

The amazing thing is, every human is different. Not every discipline will work for every person. But God in His creativity has led men and women throughout the ages to create different ways of practicing His presence so that everyone would have the opportunity to experience the fullness of God in their lives.

So my encouragement to you would be to take time to learn God’s ‘unforced rhythms of grace.’ Take the time everyday to make God real to your everyday life. So that when the time comes you turn to Him first (and not last).