November 5 – “Starting at the beginning”

Yesterday (and today so far, which hasn’t been all that far yet) was one of those days where you can’t really get motivated to do much of anything.  Well, at least for me it was.  Chris was busy as usual.  She pulled out one of the unfinished quilts that her Mom had been working on before she died.  She was pretty determined to get it finished, so it won’t take her that long.  “Long” of course has different meanings in the quilting world.  It may take several months, and in the grand quilting scheme of time, that will be just a drop in the bucket.  Or she may get it done in one weekend and feel like it took her forever.  I guess I don’t understand the mindset yet.  But the point is she was quite motivated and focused, so I was honestly a little jealous.  Monday is one of my biggest workdays in terms of preparation.  I was doing my best to come up with a flow of things for the teaching at church next week.  I finished the website article and entered the teaching notes onto the church Facebook page.  Those were just reporting kinds of things.  It was the creative stuff that was just beyond me.  I have been teaching through the Gospel of John, so I knew the next passage.  I just wasn’t inspired with any word from God to communicate.  So that meant most of the day was given over to praying for some direction.  Not a bad thing, by any means, and certainly not the first time it has happened, but it always puts a crimp in my weekly schedule.  I guess I was kind of sad to realize that there are so many areas in which I have become a creature of routine.    

So what do I do when I hit one of those lows?  As I said, in this particular case I remembered to pray first.  Not always something that comes to mind in one of these mini-crises.  Once I got assurance that God was still in control and would guide me, then I did relax a bit.  Still didn’t have a clue which direction to take the teaching, though.  So that’s when I considered some other possible approaches to my drought of mind.  And for me, that usually means finding something completely mindless to engage myself in.  See, I have tried doing some crossword puzzles.  I like crossword puzzles.  I do one every night before I go to bed.  But crossword puzzles have the opposite effect on me.  I get sleepy.  Requires too much brain energy, I suppose.  There is always the “Take a nap” approach.  I often do that one without even intending to.  Has something to do with the medication I’m taking, I think.  I have tried changing the focus of what I’m doing, and sometimes that is effective.  Like instead of working on the teaching, I switch to the kids’ sermon.  Problem there is, I try to make the kids’ sermon an introduction to the teaching, so if I don’t have an idea of where I’m going, I can’t really devise an introduction to it.  I have worked on the other Bible studies that I teach during the week.  There is always something else to work on.  Or I could read a novel.  I really enjoy good Christian fiction.  Ted Dekker is a favorite.  I don’t always have a new book available, though.  Sometimes I take a break completely and watch TV.  Nothing like an episode of The Mentalist or Doctor Who or Flashpoint or NCIS.  It certainly fits the “mindless” category.  For me, though, probably the best idea-starter is to do something physical.  Take a walk around the house.  Mow the grass.  Make a WalMart run for Chris.  Go visit one of the fire stations.  Hey, it’s getting close to Christmas, so I’ll have to make some time to do some carving. 

Can I be honest about something here?  When I started this blog entry today, I had no idea what to write about.  Probably shows.  But it also has shown me that the biggest problem in motivation is getting started.  Once the beginning is out of the way, the rest will come.  So here I go.  Let me see … John 7:1-13 …

Psalms 119:1 says, “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.”

Father, thank you for loving us even in the times we are too dull to recognize where you are active around us.  Amen.