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2 years ago
“life in real time” project, recap.
Last week I undertook a personal project in blogging most of what a “normal” week is for myself. Mostly in pictures and a few lines to describe them. It wasn’t just for my own benefit, but hopefully for anyone that reads this blog. The question to be asked from all this was and is, “How do you spend your time and for what purpose is it spent?”. This may only affect my daily activities, but it’s never a bad thing to step back and look at the way we live. This project wasn’t to cover the basic things we do such as getting ready in the morning. It was more to point out the more specific things that occur. That being said, away we go with the recap.
The week of 2/15/10 - 2/21/10 was a fairly normal week by most all standards. Working in ministry there is never a “normal” week. There are usually phone calls, emails, conversations that aren’t able to be blogged about because it’s not my place to air someone else’s struggles. Looking back at last week some things that really stood out in my own life are sleeping, eating, prioritizing habits that aren’t conducive to being at my best.
#1 - Looking at sleeping. I really enjoy writing. All sorts of things from songs, short stories, blogs, etc. and have always thought that for some reason the middle of the night was the best time for that. I can’t tell you how many “amazing” songs have been written at 3am to be played again during day hours to be very “unamazing” lol. Also living in a non metro area it is not common for others to be active during late hours, so the question that I had to ask myself after last week is, “Am I being selfish with the time allowed a person by being up late and not being 100% during the daytime when everyone else active?”. This week I’ve realized that in almost all cases I am. My job is to work with students and be the hands and feet here for what God would have me do. Being tired because I didn’t get a good nights rest and not being able to fully invest in the students here is not a good thing. I heard a sermon many years ago about the chance for not getting proper rest so we can fully engage God daily to quickly become a sin. Looking back at things over the past few days have made me realize how close I am to playing with fire in this. A change was and is necessary. This week I’m making every effort to go to sleep at a reasonable hour to get the rest needed to fully be able to not just engage God daily, but people. So from my experience, this may be the time to look at your time of rest and recovery habits. Are you staying up too late to reach your full potential? Not that every late night is wasted. There are some amazing times of conversation, creativity, and engaging with God during those times. Each person will be different in this. Is it the best though.
#2 - Looking back at eating. A couple years ago I was sitting in the crowd at Fellowship Church in Texas when Jillian Michaels from the show, “The Biggest Loser” came and informed Michelle Aguilar and her mother they were to be on that seasons show! (Michelle went on to be the “biggest loser” that season). Something in me caused an “AHA!” moment. From that night on it was my mission to get healthy. I went on to lose around 85 pounds. Starting off it was rough to say the least. I’ve been normally active in my life up to a couple years prior to this night and realized that one of the reasons I was also lacking energy was because of that laziness. Once things starting going though suddenly I had more energy, confidence, and was willing to step out of my comfort zones. After losing all that weight and allowing “life” to get in the way I fell off that wagon. Recently I had a conversation with an old friend about how ministers are some of the most unhealthy physically people there are. It’s so easy for us to play the, “God loves us how we are” card, which is true, but overeating and laziness go hand in hand. I had to ask myself after looking at this past week, “Has there been times to minister to someone that I’ve missed because I was too “tired” or just plain too “unhealthy” to be able to do it? I am a certified personal trainer and SPIN instructor. I “know” the right things to put into my body and the proper level of exercise to perform to be healthy and at my best. I just haven’t been putting them into use. I realized that I’ve put weight back on in the last few months. This doesn’t just have an impact on my body, but made me think about how often we “know” something, but it just sits there never being utilized to reach our potential. Living a healthy life allows us to be at our best for God’s Kingdom, which if you know Jesus, living at our best is what we should strive for. Not just to show off that new body at the beach, but to be able to make the impact we’re called to. There are so many ministers that are unhealthy just like the rest of our country. We’re called to be set apart, so how does that triple whopper do that?
#3 - Procrastination. That is a word most of us know all too well. Not necessarily intentionally, but there none the less. For as long as I can remember I’ve always been one to wait until the last possibly moment to get something I needed to done. NOT A GOOD IDEA. When we wait until the last possible minute to finish something it adds stress to not only ourselves, but everyone involved. In the church I’ve heard, “We’ll just let the Spirit do what it wants to”. Awesome, I’m all for letting the Holy Spirit be in control, but why wait until the last minute to check allow that? When we invest time and show up prepared things go better. The winter olympics are about to finish up, pretty sure all the athletes there didn’t just decide to pick up a snowboard or pair of skates and compete. They showed up as ready as they could be.
The three points I just covered seemed to be the “big” ones for myself. I’m sure if you’re reading this and you took a week to log everything you did, there would be different struggles. Maybe in a few months I’ll do this again and see if anything has changed, hopefully it will. I don’t mind throwing myself out there and sharing in things I struggle with. We’re all a broken people with things to work on. We’ve all been told things that made us think, “Ya, I really need to work on that”. The question is, with that knowledge are you going to do anything about them?
That’s my recap of a “life in real time”. How’s your life look in real time?
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