Oh SH....the couch is about to fall out the back

School is back in full swing but I am not. Can anyone out there relate to me? I think that every semester I say "heck yeah," this is my time to do school right, to go to bed on time and to be super intentional with the group of guys the Lord has placed me in. I go out and buy a planner and make lists of people who I want to dig in with. In my head/on paper my plans and tactics are flawless, but then something called life happens. My roommates are up late hanging out and I can't help but do the same, I see an opportunity to take on a job and I do it, people around me need help and so I drop my own agenda and help them and in the process of all these great interruptions, my grand plans are diminished.

This summer when I went on my epic craigslist adventure to pick up the vending machine and the massive sectional couch we almost had a catastrophe. We made it to the hottest, most miserable place on earth, college station and loaded up what I call the pink monster: a 5 piece sectional couch complete with a folding bed, recliner and one dysfunctional recliner that will end up never getting repaired (maybe after float season). After manhandling the couch onto the trailer, we headed to Houston to pick up the whale of a vending machine. Along the way, Kip, Will and I were talking, laughing about the adventure when out of the corner of my eye I saw the pink monster begin moving. Straddling my vision between the road ahead of me and the crisis behind me, I observed the wind pick up one of the sections of the couch flip up and begin waltzing toward the end of the trailer. I had a sudden flash of the calamity behind me which was potentially about to ensue; an oversized, bulky couch section punching through the radiator of the sedan behind me or even worse, the windshield destroying the drivers. None of this was happening at breakneck speed, but it was definitely something that needed to be dealt with. I made the call to pull over and rearrange and re-strap everything on the trailer. From there, it was smooth sailing.

Right now, in slow motion, the pieces of my life are shifting around and some of the sections even want to flip off my trailer. For the most part I have kept driving, keeping an eye on the status of everything, but pretty soon, if I don't pull over, I'm going to pay for it. Does this mean that I have the wrong pieces loaded? No, it just means that I have loaded my pieces incorrectly. (I realize that this analogy only really makes sense to me and the handful of people who have loaded a trailer down with ratchet straps.) The idea is not necessarily that I am involved in the wrong things, it's just that I am missing the essential element for balance in my life, my own personal time with the Lord. My faith is what holds my life together and as I get busier and busier, the ratchet straps that hold my life together begin to loosen.

For me, I know that this is happening, because my life is full of great things and great people, I am not facing any major crisis right now and I have every reason to be totally satisfied with life, but I'm not. I accomplish a lot every day, but it is not enough. I need to get away and spend time with Jesus on a daily basis. That is the only way that the air will taste sweet again and the only way that I will be able to love those around me the way that Jesus has called me to, Live the dream, life is too short not to.

Just a little off

Do you ever have those days where you just feel a little off, where the day just doesn't go quite the way you wanted it to or maybe it was one of those "blah" days where nothing really good or bad happened? Today was one of those days for me, I had a packed weekend and then woke up on the Monday of a three day weekend, two hours before heading into work and then from there my day was just kind of got sucked up. (the hours from 9 to 2AM seem to get away from me every night) I don't know why "blah" days bring up an array of odd feelings or what even sparks them, but they definitely exist and they are definitely normal. I think that that part of the problem with these nonchalant days is that we find our value in what tasks we complete or how full or fun our day was. It is normal to have these feelings and I think that they are a result of overworking.

I used to drive a four cylinder hunting jeep and it was great for dirt roads and it could not be beat crawling around rocks, but when I hopped on the highway and needed to pass someone or gun it to get onto the freeway it topped out at about 60 and that little engine would scream for fresh air until I downshifted and reached a comfortable cruising speed. Blah days are the downshift period. We spend so much of our lives speeding to get where we need to go that when we finally downshift and our speed begins to level out, we feel uncomfortable because our pistons aren't pumping quite so hectically.

I don't know where you are, if you're at a place where you look at the road ahead and say wow, I'm about to dive into chaos or maybe you're at a place where all of the sudden you have a significant amount of time on your hands, maybe you just got out of a relationship with a long time girlfriend and now you feel weird because all of the time and energy that was directed there has no where to go. Maybe you just graduated and being in the real world all of your best friends are not around and your bed time has been bumped back from 2AM to 10PM. I don't know, but whatever it is, God cares about you and wants you to live fully and desperately wants you to know that you aren't in this thing alone. Life is beautiful and it is meant to be lived, so wherever you are, be grateful and through the good and bad, praise God, because he has always loved you and always will. Live the dream. My roommates just told me to stop blogging and start living, so I guess I need to get to it...