I Make My Life Hard
This past week has been hard. It's sometimes defeating to realize that all the work that you do, still doesn't always guarantee success. Everything in life is subjective; it just depends on who is assessing your skills. Last week, I depraved my body of sleep just to get some assignments done, yet the final outcome failed to produce the results I wanted. However, that is just the problem; it was the results that I wanted. I found that I am my toughest critic. While that usually keeps me working hard and trying to learn the most, I can at times not give myself the grace that I, myself, have received from God and others. Has anyone ever noticed that it is easier to give grace to others than to yourself?
I usually get to this place every semester, where I realize that all I'm doing can only get done by the grace of God. I like a full plate and rarely get stressed out by everything going on in my life. My response is just typically turning into a machine and chugging out assignments and tasks at rapid speed. However, those have typically been the "big" projects in my life. I face the new challenge this semester of daily "small" assignments and can't seen to understand the balance of working hard yet not becoming overwhelmed by the insignificant.
My prayer right now is to see the big picture, to see what God has me to learn this semester and where to find the balance. I need to discover my priorities and order my life around them, not cater to the "tyranny of the urgency" because after all that will always compete for your time, it just may not be my battle to fight.
I'm hoping to find a better schedule to update this but I don't have internet access at home and I'm not on campus much without being in class or ferociously "chugging out assignments" before they are due. I miss the leisurely days in the library where I had a lot to do but a lot of time to do it in. The email study breaks seem to be a thing of the past....
I usually get to this place every semester, where I realize that all I'm doing can only get done by the grace of God. I like a full plate and rarely get stressed out by everything going on in my life. My response is just typically turning into a machine and chugging out assignments and tasks at rapid speed. However, those have typically been the "big" projects in my life. I face the new challenge this semester of daily "small" assignments and can't seen to understand the balance of working hard yet not becoming overwhelmed by the insignificant.
My prayer right now is to see the big picture, to see what God has me to learn this semester and where to find the balance. I need to discover my priorities and order my life around them, not cater to the "tyranny of the urgency" because after all that will always compete for your time, it just may not be my battle to fight.
I'm hoping to find a better schedule to update this but I don't have internet access at home and I'm not on campus much without being in class or ferociously "chugging out assignments" before they are due. I miss the leisurely days in the library where I had a lot to do but a lot of time to do it in. The email study breaks seem to be a thing of the past....
posted by Toph at 12:10 PM
3 Comments:
So that explains the lack of your presence...!
Good to get an update - it's so interesting how our lives work b/c I am struggling w/the opposite - focusing too much on the big picture (where I can rest easy) and ignoring the minor details (that are what make life go). Don't be too tough on yourself -
talk to you soon ~
I know you're going to do great!
AND, I can't wait to read some of your creative writing pieces...
dude-you are not alone in this battle...it is just a matter of high the cost of the price becomes in one's life of sleeping too little,not eating enough or healthy and then one day your body shuts down and you realize-'oh,this is where it ends-this is my limit and this is the scar my body will carry until its last breath bacause I pushed it too hard'.
I saw such a cool quote scribbled on the front of a hand-out of my friends in one of my classes today:'C's get degrees' and I just smiled at God's gentle sense of humour...
for perfectionist deadline-addicted workoholics like myself,the problem lies with basing my sense of identity in my usefulness of by my results instead of the expensive grace of Christ in my life.
now I have messed up many parts and systems in my physiological body as well as a pattern or two in my psyche about priorities and relationships because I had to prove myself to myself and at times other people (who couldn't give a hoot today about it).
but in our weaknesses we finally get back with the program of believing like a child about just loving each second of each day and finding as much beauty in the peace we feel when we are focussed on being loved by God and that it is enough.
'one day at a time' another of my great mentors taught me-the mother of SEVEN kids, a successful business woman and wife to a pastor and part-time attorney (tent-maker).if anybody else said it to me, I would just think 'ah yes, a tad corney perhaps' but falling from this woman's lips and seeing the peace and grace she carries through every aspect of her life, I can see it works and it is true!
peace...
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