My schedule has been a little too crazy lately. With School stuff, easter, church events, and my wife also working, we have been a little crazy at the Casa Deumana. This week alone is crazy. Let me give you the run down Friday to Friday
Good Friday Gathering & Kathy had to work
Saturday Mountlake Terrace Easter Egg Hunt
Sunday Easter (A normal Sunday usually starts with me getting up at 5am to get set for the day, I am at the church by 7:45 and I don’t stop for the whole day until about 8:30)
Monday – Don graciously gave the staff the day off
Tuesday – Don was out so I was leading staff meeting and making follow-up contacts from Easter Sunday (Lots of new folks which is awesome) Kathy was also scheduled to work.
Wednesday – Work in the office – All Church Skate Night – Kathy was scheduled to work night shift
Thursday – Work at the Office – Kathy Scheduled to work night shift.
Friday – My day off but I have the kids on Friday mornings as Kathy is sleeping. This Friday we have the YoungLife Capernaum Banquet which I am M.C. for the Silent Auction (totally looking forward to this). Kathy worked wednesday this week so she could go to the banquet with me.
So pretty busy week. Each of the evenings that Kathy is working I also try to spend a lot of time working on my thesis research and writing. So our schedule is crazy busy.
I am so thankful that God loves us and gives us grace and wisdom to balance these schedules most of the time. I am also grateful that God loves us enough to force us to rest sometimes.
Tuesday evening I became incredibly ill. I don’t want to go into much detail but let me just say this, the food I ate during the day was on the express schedule. Kathy also got pretty sick. She tried to go to work on Tuesday and made it 4 hours before she had to come home. Wednesday we were battling this stomach bug all day as well. No energy, no desire to move, just needed to rest and recover. I couldn’t go to the Skate Night too, but it was still a fun event from what I heard.
I stayed home and read a book called Leading On Empty. It was fitting that that book talks about how to recover from burn out. It’s the kind of thing that you want to read before you are actually burned out completely. I’m no where near burnout symptoms. And God was gracious enough to give me a 24 hour stomach bug to slow me down for a day.
I try not to complain to much when I’m sick, because I’m hardly ever sick. And when I’m ill enough to stay home I have to examine my schedule and 9/10 times I see how crazy busy my schedule has been. I look at those illnesses as a forced Sabbath. Because God loves me enough to make me rest.
When I was in high school. God was gracious enough to give my Mono my senior year. I was senior class president, I was getting ready to perform in our school’s Annual Comedy Competition Mr. LW, stressing out about how we were going to pay for Prom, Senior Class Gift, and also trying to get a bunch of Sr. Guys to be motivated to care about our Guys Spirit Club the Roo Crew. Also I was very involved in my church’s youth group and I was the guitar player for a Band that played 2-3 concerts a month. Did I mention that I was still in High School? So on top of all that I still had classes and homework. Then because I was incredibly foolish I worked 16-20 hours a week at Longs Drugs. So . . . I was busy. Too busy. God gave me Mono. It was the most painful blessing that I’ve ever received from God.
Mono forced me to take two weeks off from everything. I ate yogurt and Slurpees. Slept all day and watched TV. It was incredibly painful but I needed to slow down. It was a pretty great lesson that I learned. And I try to make sure that I don’t put myself in that kind of situation again.
God is faithful, and when I start to let my calendar get a little too full for Him, he likes to force me to rest. So, sorry for the people that I may have disappointed yesterday. But God had a different plan for me.
So the challenge for me is to keep my calendar under control. But that’s not just something I need to do. We all have a tendency to commit to too much stuff. So look at your calendar. What can you cut? What can you say no to? You’ve got a lot on your plate too. Don’t let it get to the place where you are forced to take a Sabbath. Build it into your schedule. And I really don’t ever apologize for my regularly scheduled Sabbaths. But If I don’t guard them God never apologizes for forcing me to take one.
p.s.On the plus side, I lost 16 lbs from my mono experience. And yesterday I lost 2 lbs. So that helped. :o)
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