Timely Perks of Singleness

To continue the theme of singleness, let's cover a few more things that could be a productive use of your time while you are single.  As a single person myself, I have had this argument with quite a few married people and I think to a degree it stands strong; however, there are some caveats that I am willing to concede to a married person which have been pointed out rather strongly to me, the single person "with nothing else to do than take care of yourself"....

Yes.  That was actually said to me and I'm willing to bet that you, if you are single, you have heard that as well.  Comments?

I have been told that a married person with children does not have the time that a single person has.  It is on this premise that I beg to differ.  We all have the same amount of time... we just choose to spend it differently due to priorities.  I know I am probably only representing the single person's side but in my defense, I am not married nor have I been so I am only talking about what I know first hand.  I have thought about how life would be different for me if I were married and so I can integrate that perspective as well though thinking about a scenario and actually living a scenario is quite different.  Let's just say that there are perks about being married such as having another adult around to help with chores, someone to help provide financially, help with homework, do the household errands, even stuff as silly as fastening bracelets and zipping dresses.  The perks about being single include, not picking up someone else's dirty clothes :), not having to provide financially for anyone else but myself, arranging my schedule around what works for me rather than someone else, generally using my time in the way that I deem important rather than how my husband or children deem important.

There are perks to both sides and cons to both sides... If they are both gifts from God, then there will not be one that is far and away better than the other, though it might appear that way based on where we are standing. 

Anyway, the crux of this entry will be about T-I-M-E - amounts, management, wasters and priorities.

First,  every person has the same amount of hours in a day.  Every one - married or single.  Your marital state does not whether or not you have more or less time than anybody else.  It all comes down to management.  How do you manage your own 1440 minutes per day?

Management of these precious minutes can be one of the greatest obstacles to the growth of the Kingdom of God.  It can also devastate your own personal productiveness in life.  There are a portion of those minutes that will and should be spent sleeping (7-8ish hrs), eating (2-3ish hours), and getting ready for events of the day/evening (1-2ish hrs).  These are things that everyone does (should do) everyday.  Taking the high end of time towards those activities, it still leaves 13 hours of remaining time to manage out.  If you don't manage your time, someone else will manage your time for you.  For example, I remember in college having a difficult conversation with my parents because I had not done well on a pretty big test.  My reason was because I had sat up listening to two different friends having very "traumatic" events... I believe one girl was distraught because a guy didn't call her back and another girl was failing a class.  I remember feeling very sympathetic at the time for their plights and yet, none of this was reciprocated the day I got my failing test grade back because they had to go get ice cream and because the other one had a date (ironically with the other girl's guy... we now know why he didn't call her back.)
Bottom line... they were managing their time in the way that they wanted to... and they managed MY time in the way they wanted to... I, on the other hand, did not manage my time, did not do well on my test because I listened to them instead of studying and then did not have the sympathetic ear in return.  Tough lesson to learn but one desperately needed.

I still struggle with that at times.  I can get overwhelmed and feel like I am just spinning my wheels not accomplishing anything.  However, I have tried to implement strategies that work for me... daytimer, calendar, setting time limits, measureable goals/objectives, PLANNING... Is it easy?  For me, absolutely not.  I am not wired that way.  It is a discipline to do that every day but if I want to make my life count for something, management of time is crucial for success and fatal of not implemented.

Here is a link for further information on time management.

Let's talk about time wasters... there are a lot!!!  I'll put some down that are prevalent in the world that I live in - in my own life or those that I love...

Facebook, excessive sports watching events, emails, surfing the internet, TV watching, procrastination, reading innumerable blogs/internet sites, excessive texting that interrupts a mind's train of thought, excessive shopping, mindless unintentional reading, etc...

I'm gonna be honest, I really enjoy doing many of those things I mentioned above.  I do.  I think the question to determine if these things are time wasters are:
1)  What is this doing for my overall productivity of my day?  Is it adding to or distracting from?
2)  If this is a productive activity of my day, is it in excessive amounts?  Too much of a good thing is not always a great thing.  Sometimes it is just too much to fit into a day meant for working and productivity.
3)  Does it negatively impact your other prioritized activities for the day?

This brings us to priorities...

What are your priorities?  When you take an inventory of your activities, do they equal the kind of person that you want to be?  Everyone has different priorities and we aren't required to have the same ones.  What are your priorities?
- To be top salesperson of the firm
- To be in a position of leadership in order to faciliate change
- To make more money or a certain dollar amount
- To be learning a new skill to make you more marketable in this difficult job market
- To be a parent
- To be a good friend
- To be faithful to your personal charities/churches through giving
- To be President of the US
- To be more open about your faith with your colleagues
- To be married

There are hundreds of thousands of priorities and you can choose what you want those to be.  I think that is part of the problem is that many people haven't set priorities and they are going to realize too late that the world has set their priorities for them and they aren't at all where they want to be. 

If you want to be in a position of leadership, what are your practical steps on getting there?  Are you showing up to work on time?  Are you doing the extra steps that set you apart from the crowd?  Are you doing research about what could revolutionize your field and trying to align your skill set and giftings in the convergent path as much as possible?  

If you want to be married, what are your practical steps in getting there?  Are you where you want to be emotionally when you Mr. or Mrs. Perfect-For-You shows up?  Physically?  Spiritually?  Do you have mounds of debt that will assuredly impact your spouse?  Do you take care of yourself?  Do you have unrealistically high expectations for your soon to be spouse to meet ... and then expect that they accept you "as you are"...  Is that the equivalent to saying "I am looking for the crown jewels for which I will trade you a broken gumball machine necklace"?  We are not perfect and have definite flaws, but we have a responsibility to do the best with the strengths and weaknesses that we have been given.  Work hard to stretch yourself.  Think out of the box.  Do something for someone else.  Quit focusing on what you don't have and focus on all the positives that you do.  You become more attractive and more like the person that Mr. or Mrs. Perfect-For-You is looking for in the first place.

I guess this post is an encouragement to take an inventory of your life and how you spend your time.  Does worrying about tomorrow add a single minute to your day?  I think we all know the answer.  Does your daily use of 1440 minutes each day reflect the microcasm of character you want to exude?  Prioritize.  Get the big stones in the jar before adding some much sand that the big chunks won't fit.  When the big things are taken care of, the littler things are much easier to fill in.  What are your big things?  If I looked at your minute by minute time schedule, would I think that you are the developer of Facebook?  Would I question your commitment to Christ and easily believe your commitment to the Kardashians?  Would I think you talk like Billy Graham but act more like Alexander Graham Bell with your love of the phone?

Same amount of time in everyone's day... how are you spending yours?

The Best Irony

Here is a question that will make many of you laugh out loud if you know me at all...

How in the world does anybody live without a daytimer? 

I think I might be addicted to the organization and the fact it yields me a much more organized life.  It only took 30+ years to come to this conclusion.  I think that there might be hope for me yet.  :) 

Welcome Another New Year, New Decade

I got this great, thought-provoking entry directly from The Center of Biblical Spirituality and its director, Donald Whitney. Excellent food for thought as the year ends and the New Year is upon us.

What is God's best for us in the year to come?

A few things to consider...

Ten Questions to Ask
at the Start of a New Year

Once, when the people of God had become careless in their relationship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. "Consider your ways!" (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things happening to them, and to evaluate their slipshod spirituality in light of what God had told them.

Even those most faithful to God occasionally need to pause and think about the direction of their lives. It's so easy to bump along from one busy week to another without ever stopping to ponder where we're going and where we should be going.

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

In addition to these ten questions, here are twenty-one more to help you "Consider your ways." Think on the entire list at one sitting, or answer one question each day for a month.

11. What's the most important decision you need to make this year?

12. What area of your life most needs simplifying, and what's one way you could simplify in that area?

13. What's the most important need you feel burdened to meet this year?

14. What habit would you most like to establish this year?

15. Who is the person you most want to encourage this year?

16. What is your most important financial goal this year, and what is the most important step you can take toward achieving it?

17. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your work life this year?

18. What's one new way you could be a blessing to your pastor (or to another who ministers to you) this year?

19. What's one thing you could do this year to enrich the spiritual legacy you will leave to your children and grandchildren?

20. What book, in addition to the Bible, do you most want to read this year?

21. What one thing do you most regret about last year, and what will you do about it this year?

22. What single blessing from God do you want to seek most earnestly this year?

23. In what area of your life do you most need growth, and what will you do about it this year?

24. What's the most important trip you want to take this year?

25. What skill do you most want to learn or improve this year?

26. To what need or ministry will you try to give an unprecedented amount this year?

27. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your commute this year?

28. What one biblical doctrine do you most want to understand better this year, and what will you do about it?

29. If those who know you best gave you one piece of advice, what would they say? Would they be right? What will you do about it?

30. What's the most important new item you want to buy this year?

31. In what area of your life do you most need change, and what will you do about it this year?

The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn't considered the question.

If you've found these questions helpful, you might want to put them someplace—in a day planner, PDA, calendar, bulletin board, etc.—where you can review them more frequently than once a year.

So let's evaluate our lives, make plans and goals, and live this new year with biblical diligence, remembering that, "The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage" (Proverbs 21:5). But in all things let's also remember our dependence on our King who said, "Apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

Copyright © 2003 Donald S. Whitney.

Copyright Disclaimer: All the information contained on the Center for Biblical Spirituality website is copyrighted by Donald S. Whitney. Permission granted to copy this material in its complete text only for not-for-profit use (sharing with a friend, church, school, Bible study, etc.) and including all copyright information. No portion of this website may be sold, distributed, published, edited, altered, changed, broadcast, or commercially exploited without the prior written permission from Donald S. Whitney.

Who Will Be Knockin' on Heaven's Door?

I subscribe to a blog by Abraham Piper. Yes. The son of John.

I chose to subscribe to this blog for a couple of reasons:
1) His blog's name is 22 Words. The point is to engage thought, make a point, induce a laugh, etc. in 22 words. ONLY 22 words.

I thought "How is that possible?" I think possibly 2200 words or MAYBE 220 words but 22 words? Seriously.

Yes. He does it day in, day out.... and I am amazed and intrigued and challenged to say more with less. (Perhaps with the next post...)


2) His wife is a speech pathologist and at times, he speaks "my language" of daily events when talking about or quoting his wife.

3) He is the son of one of the greatest preachers and, in my mind, challenging writers that I have gotten to partake of in my short life and I assumed that he has picked up some of his father's giftings. This was one assumption in which I was correct and though different, he still addresses concepts, thoughts, and perspectives I want to be challenged with and engaged on generally speaking.

Anyway, His post of the evening is....

"We will be shocked by who’s in Heaven.

Do we live like this is depressing or
exciting for us?"

I fail, but I want my life now to prove I’ll be overjoyed—not annoyed—with
whoever else God lets into Heaven.

(See - count 'em... 22 words)

I had not thought about that perspective before.

Are there really some people who were called by God into heaven that I will be disappointed , chagrined, irritated even at the fact that they, too, are in heaven?

I have thought about a lot of people that I would sincerely want to be in heaven but will not be there whether it is because they have either shown no interest, refused to discuss the topic, are banking on good works alone, "trusting in chariots and horses", or defiantly rebut the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This I think about and think about WAY more often than about those who I would be ticked about arriving there with me.

Have you thought about this?

Are you talking to those that you want to be there in heaven with you?

More importantly....

....are you talking to those that you DON'T want to be there in heaven with you?

Why or why not?

HT: Abraham Piper @ http://twentytwowords.com/

Questions to Ponder...

What is the legacy you want to leave here on this earth?

Is your life leading to that legacy that you want to leave?

What changes should you make?

What should you persevere in?

What sacrifices are necessary?

Whom shall you decide to love in spite of your feelings?

Whom shall you stand up to in spite of your fear?

Whom will you forgive when they don't deserve it?

Where are you going?

When are you going to quit?

How are you going to do it?

When are you going to start thinking about it?

When are you going to do it?

A Pressing Fear...

The more I read, I feel more convicted that I have feasted on spiritually good upbringing, good heredity and milk toast theology. The problem is that I question if this has been enough for me. Have I rested on my laurels being the "good girl" and never delved into when I stand before Him and my actions, thoughts, desires, evidence of belief, are on display what He will say to me and about me? Have I tried to strike a bargain with God, promising to keep a bunch of rules? I fear I'm a spiritual slug.

As I am reading C.S. Lewis "MERE CHRISTIANITY", I have been profoundly impacted by the truths that are so often glossed over. A few thoughts that I have run across:

Final Curtain Call:

"Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. ..... All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to good digestion, will fall off some of use; all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises."

PRIDE

"According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind... it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began...For Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense....The first step is to realise that one is proud.... At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. It you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

One more...

ONE BODY, MANY PARTS: Satan's Skew

"Things which are parts of a single organism may be very different from one another: things which are not, may be very alike. Six pennies are quite separate and very alike: my nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share a common life.... If you forget that (someone) belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, you will want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. A Christian must not be either..."

"(We have a tendency to point out to each other) - which of these errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled."

I am so glad that I have taken the time to read this book as I see it becoming a foundational book from which to draw deeper into the knowledge and love of Christ. I highly recommend it if you have not read it. I have almost the whole book underlined and highlighted. :)

You might find that you, too, could be a spiritual slug, moving about so slowly in your spiritual growth and depending on your good upbringing and good "heredity" that we do not work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We take on everyone else's faith and don't ever go beyond what is specifically fed to us by a trusted pastor, a parent, a good friend who attends church or mate that reads the Sunday School lesson before church.

This should not be.

There will be surprises. Of this, I am sure.

Oh Lord, please come quickly.

Can I ask a few questions?

Here's a few for the masses...

1) What, in the name of all that is shiny and bright, is "Woot!" ??
My vague understanding is like... slang for "Woo-hoo". Is this correct?
For those of you who use this ridiculous term, does "Woo-Hoo" use too much of your air or take too much time to say or what? And before you answer, most of you double up on the "woot" to make it "Woot! Woot!".
If you are a double mint "Woot-er", are you doubly happy? I hope so because you sound doubly ridiculous.

2) Who is watching the train wreck that is The Bachelor? Dear friends, I have seen my share of the bachelors over years and I have to proclaim that this season's show is, in particular, filled with complete nut jobs. I know.... editing. Right, right, right, right, right, right..... I'm just sayin' .... take it to the cleaners, even though we are in an economic recession, there are NO psychoanalysts losing their job over at ABC this year. In fact, they are putting in the overtime. I have never experienced the embarrassment in my own heart for these poor souls like I have this season. It is practically KILLING me but you better not be calling me on Monday night until after 9:00 because I just cannot help myself.

Also, on a side note, if you are a Bachelor watcher and you are not reading Lincee's recap blog, you are missing out on an incredible piece of work. Friends, this girl's blog gets thousands, THOUSANDS of hits each week just for that recap and ABC and host Chris Harrison are some of those reading each week. Here is the link: http://www.ihategreenbeans.com/

YOU HAVE TO READ IT!

OK, that was a short one with I guess, only two questions. Or at least, the only ones I asked out loud...