God's Time

Butterfly Wonderland

This would be the species of cactus that attacked Calvin's hand

True confessions

Stacey and Casey's Visit

To everything there is a season. This is the season of bronchitis and sinus infection and tailbone pain. It's a season of overextension.

I'm getting back to the routine of accompanying. Just when you have about had it with getting up on Sunday mornings, the choir finishes the anthem and the whole church applauds. As you walk back to your pew, you see a father figure dabbing his eyes and you see Henry and his family in the third row and you think, my God, maybe, just maybe, it's all worth it. Maybe our contributions have an impact on actual real people. Maybe music is an actual gift that actually speaks to people's actual hearts.

The rest of my family played hooky from church Sunday morning. That turned out okay, because sometimes sitting in church by yourself, without looking for pens and tissues in your purse, and without listening to adolescent voices flutter between soprano, alto and tenor, you can actually experience a moment of worship.

Sometimes and more often than not, it's the children's message that hits home. Pastor Sarah is talking to the rug rats about her broken wrist watch. She's pulling out coloring sheets of clock faces. What would the face of Jesus's wrist watch look like? One coloring sheet has a giant heart in the place of the twelve numbers.

Maybe God's time is different than our time.

I grew up believing that our material possessions are all gifts from God and ultimately belong to God and that makes it easy or hypothetically easy to give back.

Maybe our time really only and truly belongs to God as well.

On the micro level, this means moment to moment our time is not our own to begin with. I'm not saying that I'm not going to work for more balance and set some limitations as we go here. . . but for this season, right here right now, with the present commitments, the question becomes--what should I do with God's time today.

It works on the macro level too. How else is the sharp knife of a short life even remotely palatable? Our Pastor Bolhman used to say after every infant baptism, "I give you back your child, for as long as God has loaned him to you." Ultimately we are all just on loan to each other.

Our time is not our own. It is a resource that we are not entitled to. And we are only on loan to the people we love. That doesn't mean we don't beg for an extension. . .and grieve when we don't get it.

This tangled web of high school commute (160 minutes on activity days) and family life and studio life and church life and music teacher organizations is a recipe for burnout. It's clear, but this is the season we are in. I'll keep you posted on how we unravel it.

I ordered a book -- there is always a book to fix us--Susie Larson's Your Sacred Yes: Trading Life-Draining Obligation for Freedom, Passion, and Joy. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0764213318/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=82400740693&hvpos=1s1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8101280907197288531&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4ww0xgifgr_b
I'm sure there will be a blog entry hiding in there. . .

In the meantime--it's meant a lot to me to take an hour of God's time and sit here with my coffee and write.

Thank you God for the gift of time. Help us appreciate each moment with our loved ones and the hours in service to you in all the forms that takes. Heal our coughs and colds and tailbones, and also heal the bigger pain of the world and the people we love. Amen.