A Time To Rest

The Ecclesiastes most famous passage - A Time For This, A Time For That - is supposed to remind us all that we are, after all, human - and point to God as the only one who can be all things at all times or one thing all the time. We can't possibly work all the time and we can't possibly rest all the time, but God can do both at the same time forever if He so chooses.

Andy over at Mile From the Beach has forced my hand by choosing the subject of today's blog when he announced this week that he was going to take a quick sabbatical from blogging. Welcome to it, Andy - take as long as you want.

I too am planning a retirement of sorts. About seven months ago, I announced my 18 month plan to change my life - to find something that I could do that was different than what I was doing. I sort of stumbled into film making from left field, but I've discovered that it might definitely be a career option in the near future. If I don't sound gang busters about my prospects of becoming a film maker its not for a lack of enthusiasm - its due to a controlled enthusiasm.

I've also learned over the past painful year that I can become a little too exuberant in my visions of what might be. I am not only a dreamer like John Lennon, I am an exuberant dreamer like Don Quixote. Give me a windmill and I'll tackle it. Put a windmill before me and before you can even say Don Quixote, I'll have picked up my lance and I'll already be charging. This has been about as effective a lifestyle for me as it was for Don Quixote. Most of my friends and family have too often felt like Sancho Panz when it came to dealing with my crazy crusades and my obsession with them. But, even if I had not seen what my obsessions were doing to my personal relationships, I really started to take notice what they were doing to my health.

And so, over the last seven months or so, in addition to trying to reinvent the employable me, I've also been trying to disentangle myself from various "obsessions". I've made some good progress. I put the Novel on a much slower track, working on it only when I felt the urge. Its slow and its trying my patience but it has helped the work immensely and allowed me to start having a somewhat normal sleep cycle again (no more writing until 2 in the morning). I let Andy completely run the Tee Ball team this year (though, at first, I really wanted to help out - I quickly realized that I needed to just let go). I scaled back my committment to the Youth Group at my church, and stopped volunteering for every new project that came up, and, shock! even told them that I was too busy to do certain things! I've learned to say No a great deal lately.

But this weekend was something of a breakthrough for me. On Saturday, I left a committee meeting at my church early to go hiking with my brother. And on Sunday, I voted for the hiring of a new paid Christian Education/Youth Leader - which means that come the Fall, I will no longer be the head of the Lakeside Youth Group.

With each disentangling of my schedule, with every new free minute of time that I have earned back, comes five times the urge to fill that emptiness with some new project - some new quest. Thus far, I have resisted the urge. But I know that I will eventually be sucked back into some committment to my time and energy. In the meantime, I am hoping to committ the ultimate Christian sacriledge. I am planning on spending the entire summer away from my church, away from my youth group, away from my choir. I am planning to spend the entire summer with TWO FULL WEEKEND DAYS in which to hike, bike, and otherwise find means of releasing stress, regaining health - both mental and physical, and getting my own house in order.

For everything there is a season. And this is my season to rest. God must have quite a plan for my future if he is giving me this much time to get my head and body straight. I can only hope that I am up to whatever task He has in mind for me. In the meantime, I will be out at the beach, with a Margarita, sharpening my lance for another whack at all those windmills.

See you tomorrow...