A Full Calendar

So last week, this week and for the next few weeks, both the church calendar and my personal calendar are so full, there's barely a space left.  Our Godly Play program begins next week and we are setting up the new room, which has to be ready for tours by this Friday.  We have our church wide yard sale on Saturday.  Consecration Sunday is October 3rd, and there is a different task to be managed in the office for that every week until then.  And we're planning a gala first anniversary celebration of our Recovery Eucharist on October 1.  Add to this, our boys are transitioning back into school and homework, we've had tickets for an all day family event in NYC this Saturday for months, my mother in law had a birthday up in Vermont last weekend to get to - well, you can see, this is a very full time in my life.  (If you read my post from June 30, you know I refuse to name myself "busy.")

I guess I'm stopping for a moment in the midst of all my activity to blog in order to remind myself that even though I am moving fast these days, I am NOT like that guy on the picture up there - running and running until I forget why I'm running.  Just because all these things happen to be coming at once doesn't mean that I have to get lost in it.  There are very good reasons we're doing everything we're doing this fall, and I believe God has called us to do it.  So as for me, God gets me up in the morning and leads me through each day, and despite my spinning brain, it seems that by the grace of God, there is always time and space for everything that most needs to be done to get done.   I have to let go of the rest and trust it'll get done another day if it's really important.

As my husband was busy building shelves for the Godly Play room with his cordless drill, he explained to me the difference between his new lithium battery and his older battery.  Well before it ran out of juice completely, the drill with the old battery would begin to slow down.  It would lose more and more power and be less and less useful until finally the battery died.  His new drill with the lithium battery makes it so that the drill works perfectly well at full power the entire time there is any charge left in the battery.  Then suddenly, when the battery reaches the end of its charge, the drill just suddenly stops.  The new lithium battery makes the work completely efficient until the battery is done.

So this is how I'm looking at things these days.  When my calendar is this full, I am on lithium battery mode.  I may not get the chance to slowly wind down at the end of each day.  I just go and go until I can go no more, and then I have to stop and fall into bed.  But yet, in the dark of the night, God still recharges me and makes me ready for the next day.  And you know, there are much worse things than fully using up - right to the last drop - all the energy God gives me each day.  I go to bed knowing my day has been full of life and, if I am lucky enough to wake up in the morning, tomorrow will be, too.  Soon enough, I'll have more open space for rest and relaxation and unscheduled time.  Right now, I need to fill my full days with creativity, trust and a different kind of relaxation - a relaxation into God's assistance - even as I move at a lithium charged pace.  With this attitude, I am able to appreciate the many gifts such 'full calendar times' bring.