Time Management

Spring Break thus far has been an enormous blessing.  I have been able to sleep in every day and still get some work done.  I need to buckle down for the next couple of days, though, if I really want to be well set up for next week and the week after.  This is what a break has become: the chance to sleep while doing almost as much work as I was doing during school.  Still, I really am thankful for even that.

I want to share something that changed the way I go through my days.  It happened at a community group meeting (where a group of us whippersnappers get together once a week and dig our hands into some Scripture).  A new couple were there that night, and the guy shared a revelation he'd had that when he thought of his time as his, his days were varying levels of terrible.  He felt rushed, he was begrudging with his time, and he was never satisfied with what he managed to accomplish in a given day.  But then he started reminding himself that all of the time he experienced was actually God's - given to him by God, but also directed and disposed of by God.  And it changed everything for him.  And it has changed everything for me as well.

It's a fundamentally different way of looking at time.  It means that if you start out with a plan for the day and it gets derailed, you haven't necessarily failed, you just spent God's time in a different way than you anticipated but still in a fashion that is pleasing to Him, because you know He is in charge of directing where your time goes.  This is the same philosophy that governs money and possessions, but somehow I had never applied it to time.  It is freeing and lightens the yoke while keeping me disciplined.  And it means I don't agonise over time management as much.  If I wake up earlier than I'd intended to, it means I am meant to be awake for some purpose, and so up I get and start praying to figure out what I am meant to do.  I start every day with a list that fills my waking hours, but if someone in need comes along, I trust that God put that person in my path for a reason, and that helping them is something that is pleasing to Him.  The only thing I still struggle with is when to go to sleep.  'Cause, you know, I'd skip it if I could.  Better grades and all that.