Experiment

This semester, I've decided to try something out: Eliminate the phrases "I was too busy" and "I didn't have time" from my regular use.  Instead?  "I didn't make time."  Since that's more true, and I hope it will 1) show me my priorities (since time spent is a huge indicator of that!) and 2) keep me accountable to investing my time well.  Tangentially, I hope I have to use any of these three phrases less overall as I try to discern where I should be committed, and where I shouldn't.

on repeat

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At the beginning of this semester, with all the requisite uncertainty of a class schedule with lab times yet-to-be-determined and problem sets that take 1/5th of the time that they will take in a short week or two and no research papers looming just yet, I was feeling good about my time management, and about how I'd pared down my commitments from last year.  Maybe it was the book on boundaries, or how good it felt to live, as one of my friends commented insightfully last year, with "margins," or my new understandings that 1) expectations are not obligations, and 2) being able to do something doesn't automatically mean that you should.  But mostly, I'm convinced, it was God's grace, and his patient lessons on doing the important things, not all the things.  He'd given me a verse from Matthew 5:34--"Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes' and your 'No,' 'No;' anything beyond this comes from the evil one."--and had been teaching me what this meant.

I was involved (in a sort of confusing, nebulous way... oh GOD!! I still really need your wisdom!) in a Christian fellowship, was dedicated to singing in the Gospel Ensemble, and had a job tutoring.  And that seemed just about right.

But I'm still learning, and far from there yet.  Boundaries, and saying no, are a work in progress.  I got an email at the beginning of last week that was mostly a series of questions about whether I'd be able to do several different things, and it was still overwhelming.  I probably should have said no, and been clear, and let it be--but I didn't.  In a sort of misguided concession, I said yes to half the requests, and no to the other half.  And then other things started to come up: mentoring, and volunteering, and whatever else.  Soon I was asking myself not if the things I'd agreed to were what I should be doing, but where I could fit in the time to do them.

This is foolish.

So I've been trying to rectify this, sending out emails to clarify and adjust my commitments, trying to make sure that, even if I'm having to change my 'Yes' to a 'No' (still learning!  teach me, Father God.), at least then the 'No' in my heart will match the 'No' I've spoken--and the same for 'Yes.'  Although I think this passage in Matthew is admonishing Christians to be clear with their commitments and to be able to say, 'No' when it's necessary, I am coming to see that it's also about the sheer importance of having a mouth that says 'Yes' only when the heart is also saying 'Yes.'

Now, to make one vital clarification: Jeremiah (17:9) rightly points out, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?"  So no, it is not enough--in fact, it is dangerous!--to act merely based on our whims.  After all, we are clearly instructed to "live by faith [the things of God, I'd say], not by sight [our fickle hearts and emotions]" (2 Corinthians 5:7).  But there is a still, small voice in our spirits that, as I learned in Pursuing God's Will Together, has long been recognized as the Holy Spirit, who can work through desolation (making us feel uneasy and "wrong" about a decision) and consolation (giving us a profound sense of peace when our decision aligns with God's will).  (The terms desolation and consolation are from St. Ignatius--check it out!!)

So, I'm saying NO to a lot of things these days, almost infinitely more than I used to (since I used to avoid that word pretty carefully).  I know that, as I learn I'll say yes to some of the wrong things and no to some of the right ones--but I trust that God will correct me.

Thoughts on Hands

Today's thought comes from a sermon by Zac Poonen (listen here!):

If your hands are not functioning well together, say, by causing you to drop things you try to carry, it's not because your two hands haven't spent enough time clasped together in "fellowship," but rather because one or both of them have lost connection to the brain from which they receive directions.  Take hands as parts of the body of Christ, and Christ himself as the head, and this is a powerful message to all sorts of churches and fellowships.

Get connected to the head!

things will fall apart without You

So I'm sitting in my room, the lone junior in a hall full of sophomores who have just returned to school today, and man, I am so convicted of this right now: Everything (everything!) will fall apart without Jesus.  There's just no way it stands--anything stands--without Twereduampon, the tree against which we lean and do not fall, as the Akans of Ghana call him.

There's a lot of shouting three floors below me, on the vast, dewy quad traversed by overeager students zealous to make up for summer evenings not spent partying with their college friends.  And I think of the last week of training I've undergone, training as an assistant resident adviser, and how everything's just sheer chaos without Jesus at the center.  How you can keep searching for that intangible sufficiency, searching as you run across the quad with the breathless exhilaration of the night that beckons, for some drug that will quell your insufficiency.  You'll search as you drink (RA rules: As long as the situation isn't "high risk," let kids drink), have sex (RA rules: Just make sure you have a condom, and try not to go asking for the morning-after pill too often), and study (RA rules: Weekly study break.  Go.).

And you'll never find that thing.  It breaks my heart.  The whole spectacle reminds me of Yeats' "The Second Coming"... "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."  Why don't we hear the falconer?  Jesus isn't a thing--He's a person.


"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." - Colossians 1:15-20


If I have any hope of surviving this year, it's not going to be because of my RA training.  It's going to be by grace.

Jesus At the Center

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Enough Angst Already

Yep, I've had quite enough of my angsty self in recent weeks, consumed with angsty thoughts about "development" projects-- and how to keep on living when you've lived somewhere very different and aren't sure how much you miss it-- and where (or if) I fit in with certain people and certain groups and certain places and certain dreams.

So I'm choosing to leave that behind and throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race marked out for me, fixing my eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who endured the cross and scorned its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, and consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that I will not grow weary and lose heart!!  Amen.

Theme for the year:

CHOOSE TO SERVE THE LORD