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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Time and Purpose

As I eluded to yesterday, my preacher's Sunday night sermon really spoke to me.  I thought about it on my five minute drive home and woke up thinking about it Monday morning.  I think that many of us are extremely busy with our jobs, families, friends, and other things, and we live in a society where everyone, particularly women, feel like we are failures if we don't do everything and don't do everything we do perfectly.  This is something I struggle with and I'm sure many of you can relate to it.  If you know how I and many others feel, I encourage you to share your thoughts. I've provided a SimplyLinked at the bottom of this post (this is my first try with this, so if it doesn't work correctly, I'm sorry) if you'd like to share your thoughts.

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At church Sunday night, something my preacher said in his sermon really hit me.  He was teaching about the Laodiceans (Revelation 3:14-21) and how they were so wrapped up in materialistic things that they were lukewarm for God.  He also said that they were so busy that they didn't take time for God.  While I don't consider myself to be materialistic even though I do like nice things and generally speaking, I spend time with God everyday, I sometimes feel like my time spent with God can get to be more like something on my to do list that I do along with all the other things that keep my schedule jam packed.  I don't like that and it shouldn't be that way. 

With all of that said, I really need to focus on what God has for me to do and the way to do that is to spend time with Him, growing closer to Him, learning more about Him, and listening.  My life is extremely scheduled and I rarely have any real "down time" that I so desperately need.  Work obligations are of course non-negotiable and for the next six weeks or so, I am slammed with events, many of them all day and night events.  But the things that are negotiable are the volunteer time I put in with Junior League and other community organizations.

Growing up, I always said I wanted to do charity work and have a career in cause-related marketing (my honors program thesis in undergrad was actually on cause-related marketing).  Now, I'm almost twenty-five and I definitely have started my career in this field.  I don't want to get burnt out though and I'm scared that all of my other "work" could potentially cause that.  

I love my job and love that I get to do something that I love.  Even on the days when my work doesn't seem to make an impact (I like to see fast results and in my field, results aren't usually seen for 20-24 months), I realize that what I do as far as the marketing/pr/fundraising efforts of my organization are extremely vital in the economic success of this area.  It's a huge deal to me that God has answered my silent prayers and blessed me so early with a career that I love.

But when it all comes down to it, what do I need to let my non-work focus cover?  I think that it's important to think about our passions because I believe God gives us the desire to do certain things and equips us with the tools we need to do those things.  So, what are my passions?  What are the areas where I feel that God wants to use me?

In addition to the whole "charity" thing and of course being a wife and mother (I'll lump these two together as my number one passion that I hope will one day be a reality), my loves are Vacation Bible School and young people, younger (teenage) girls especially.  So how does this all fit in with what I'm supposed to do?  I don't know yet.  I have some ideas and some things I feel like I'd like to do down the road, but right now, I hardly have the time to sit and pull together some of these things.

This post may have made no sense at all to you, but I wanted to share it.  I've felt a little overwhelmed the last few days (and I'm not one who feels overwhelmed very often) thinking about all the things going on in my world from an extremely busy work schedule the next few months to "outside" things like my work with JL, AHA, and other things I'd like to do, plus family, friends, and other concerns I have.

I think what God was telling me Sunday night is that I have to breathe.  It's ok to slow down.  It's important to make the time to take time with God to talk to Him and more important, listen to Him.  I don't want to one day look back (and we all know how I like to evaluate my life!) and see opportunities I've missed or things I should have done but didn't because I was too busy to even know about them.






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