This year I work under the pressure of a looming double-deadline for fiction and for bible studies. Each March-April, my pastor, my husband, and I plot the timetable for the coming school year, and I begin studying and writing the bible studies. As I write this year, I await the return of my novel’s manuscript from my editor at Koehler Books.
When it arrives, I will work through the suggested revisions. While I wait, I scurry to get all my summer’s writing done. This is my novel journey. Writing theology and writing fiction are two very different tasks. I cannot do them simultaneously.
I have no idea when the manuscript will come back, and I don’t want to be in the middle of bible-study writing when it returns. So I press forward with haste.
My efficiency results in high productivity, which I monitor with RescueTime, seeking to use my time wisely. The need to finish these tasks also forestalls my preparation of past material for sale this summer, since I have no assistant to deal with copyright permissions and formatting. I juggle these obligations, striving to produce quality content for every venue, paid or not.
Once more I feel as if I’m running up sand dunes. The going is tough. I’m pressing down the panic. A bare week ago my mother-in-law’s funeral occurred. Grief has robbed me of acuity.
Life happens while I do my work.
Back in 2008, when I first drafted Refuge and imagined my existence as a published author, I didn’t comprehend the challenges that accompanied publication. It’s not glamorous. It involves strict time management, social media use, and prioritization.
These three principles keep me in balance:
1) My family is my top priority.
God has given me the gift of a large family. They rank before all work commitments, and I intend to keep it that way. My family takes precedence. Around them, everything else revolves. This week I will cease my labors to play with a precious granddaughter and to spend time with our son, daughter-in-law, and daughter. I can’t wait!
When people tried to rush his schedule, Jesus always said, “My time is not yet at hand.” The family of God was his priority. Obtaining us was his foremost task. To do this, he worked on God’s timetable. Jesus set his face like flint to achieve the goal. He never sacrificed God’s family for the deadline. He sacrificed himself. Jesus is the model for the Christian laborer.
2) The Master must be in the project.
We do our work for him. Therefore, his priorities are most important. He ranks the needs of people first. As he helps us to prioritize this rightly, he produces character in us. We learn to recognize that we must rely on him to do it. We strive to be like him.
3) The interruptions are not random, but are God-ordained.
The obstacles are predetermined to produce Christlikeness in us and to bring about the outcome he desires. He is as invested in our spiritual growth as he is in the final product of our service. We work for him. We are slaves of the Master.
This is Christian service. It’s nitty-gritty. It’s done with babies on hips and kids in tow, pressing a deadline. It’s behind the scenes, out of the limelight, in the middle of the night, hunched over the computer, the sick, or the dying. It’s listening to a teen at midnight. It’s rocking a child or traveling 30+ hours to arrive at a faraway land. It’s travelers’ diarrhea. It’s striving for excellence. It’s pulling it together just in time, then turning to smile at people as they come in the door.
It’s complete dependence on the Savior, and he gets all the glory.
Knowing that allows me to take a deep breath, deliver my schedule to him, exert my supreme effort, hold to my priorities, and trust him for the outcome. When I forget, everything crashes down around me.
How are you managing your time pressure?
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So well said, Melinda! We tend to think that as opportunities come our way, life will become easier or more carefree when the opposite is true. Now we have one more ball to juggle in the air. It’s hard to keep them all going!
Yet, as you said, if we allow Him to be in charge, the system flows, the cycle continues as it should. Otherwise, all the pieces come crashing down.
I have found, like you, that the more opportunities He opens for me, the closer I must scooch over to His side. If I’m not close enough to hear His heartbeat, other tasks, other people’s voices, other people’s priorities clang in my ears.
Thanks for this timely reminder.
Yes! The “scooching” provides the essential lifeline–the arms around Jesus time! When I start to feel that pressure in my chest and begin to visualize the dunes of the Sahara, I know I need to scooch. 🙂
What a great reminder, Melinda! How quickly we forget the priorities…the “Rule of Life”, the “next right thing” to be done. Prayer, prayer, prayer! So often the first to go…
As I prepare my family and home before leaving for 7 weeks, the to do list screams at me, while the call to prayer whispers…God is in the still small voice, He doesn’t scream.
I am praying for your family as you grieve, and grieve along side you. Thanks for being a woman who responds to God’s voice in ALL circumstances!
Thank you, Valerie. How I miss you! As we prioritize our large families and our God-given tasks, let us pray we will overlap at some point. I know you’re leaving any day now, and if you can squeeze in coffee before you go, text me. Otherwise, we will connect when you return. Lord willing, and please make it so, Jesus.
Yep. Scooching, drawing water from the Well of Living Water, a meal of the Bread of Life – the Word become flesh. He is essential – He must increase and I must decrease so that as I do what I do out of love and obedience to Him, others see Him and not me. He must get the glory as He is the One who gives the grace and power to live for Him rightly. My dad needs the Lord and so my husband and I go to help him, being the salt and light God created and saved us to do, no matter how spent we feel today. He restores and enables for the road ahead. I just want to do what He saved me to do well, love others with His love and rest when He calls me to. He is the Source of all I need. I will run today to Him and read of His Word and talk to Him and sleep and trust His process – even while the grass grows and the garden weeds grow and life seems beyond me. It is. That is why I need Him.
Amen, Kripsie Anne! We are often spent in the nitty-gritty. Jesus was spent completely. We are Christ followers. We walk in his steps. We rest as he directs to keep our bodies going, so we can rise to serve again. But this isn’t home. Our final rest will be glorious when we’ve spent our lives all out for the Savior and his priorities.
How wise you young women are! It has taken me a lifetime to learn what you girls already have learned. I am task-oriented, and so I have to be sure to let God change me so that I put the accent on people rather than tasks! If I am successful in letting Him love people through me, He alone gets the glory! Time spent in His Word and in prayer always seems to make us more sensitive to what is really important in light of eternity. I, too, want to love those who do not yet know God and let the Holy Spirit work on their hearts. Won’t it be wonderful when time is no more, and we won’t have to manage it at all!
That is true. It will be nice when we are outside time.
I think I have learned from a very wise mother. I couldn’t be who I am without the example you set and the lessons you taught. We will have fun in heaven together.