Friends, I am so sorry for the abrupt two-week quiet from this site. Let me tell you the story of why . . .
A Most Important Skill. I have never run a marathon. In fact, running anywhere for 26 miles is not a feat I even remotely aspire to. If I can make it through a half of Oprah on the treadmill, I feel pretty good. And yet, I think I still recognize the single most important skill for any marathon runner, and its not how fast the timed-mile is nor is it the level of physical endurance the athlete possesses. It’s not the quality of her tennis shoes or how many hours she has trained before the big race. Without question, the most important task any runner must master is simply to stay on the right course. An athlete can possess incredible stamina and speed, can have spent hours at the gym in training and have natural abilities, but if she is running towards a tree in the middle of a field instead of the actual finish line, she’s going to end up one very tired and very disappointed runner.
My Own Tree. “Babe, we gotta get to bed,” he suggested at 11 o’clock, for the third time.
“One more minute, really,” I promised by the light of the computer screen. “I am seriously almost finished with this graphic header.”
Two a.m. came and went, and still the laptop was open, and I was obsessing. Desperately unable to lay down the unfinished task and refusing to accept less than perfection, I hid out in the quiet of night, feeding my ego with how professional my little blog looked. My outlet of writing and developing websites had become an addiction. Instead of me controlling it, it was controlling me.
And I awoke the next morning with a cloud of guilt and exhaustion shadowing my day. I knew my computer-time had gotten out of balance, I knew I had disrespected my husband last night, and I knew I was becoming unhealthily consumed. And that morning as I was supposed to be homeschooling my children, I heard the enticing whisper to pick it up, again. The kids were playing well together, and the web-world became my own personal siren beckoning the ship of my focus towards it. 45-minutes later, I found myself pounding out more nit-picky details on my blog and feeling quite proud of the graphic I had laboriously spent four hours on the night before. And then I hit a button.
The wrong button.
And everything I had been working on for the last several months on my blog, disappeared. Formatting was gone, fonts were abstract, images were skewed, and the graphic that had consumed me the night before was completely erased.
The Gift of Discipline. So there I found myself, diligently running a type of marathon. But, over time, my feet had gotten off the right path. Subtly, I had begun to take a small step left, then another and another, until I found myself that morning out of breath, sweaty with exertion, and looking up only to realize that I had been running to a tree in the middle of nowhere instead of to the finish line. And I felt like hitting that wrong button was a gift from Jesus to me. It was a dramatic discipline that revealed to me that I had gotten off the marked path and that I was running in the wrong direction. My priorities had gotten mixed-up, and I had given control to an inanimate object and the temporary candy it was feeding my soul.
Re-hab. And, so, friends, I am in re-hab right now. I am trying to re-learn what it means to maintain balance, to enjoy an outlet without allowing it to become an obsession, to stay on the right track. I am humbled that my sight can quickly get fixed on the wrong things, and I am convicted that my choices oftentimes are motivated by “selfish ambition” instead of extravagant love. I may write much less frequently in the future, and the graphics on this site may never reach perfection. But, I am learning to be all right with that. After all, there’s a price to be paid for any form of re-hab.
“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he can’t lose.” -jim elliott, martyred American missionary
“God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet.” – bible, hebrews 12:10-12
10. March 2010
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