It bothers me that I’m more disciplined about journaling than I am about relating to Carla. I have allocated an hour and ten minutes toward my bedtime routine. Granted, twenty minutes of that are supposed to be for relating to Carla. But still, doesn’t that seem excessive?
With Ethan, Brandon & Jordan working The Great American Outdoor Show and Mike marooned at home and thus out of the phone queue, and the window replacement work starting, I have never ended a work day so far behind in my day-to-day workload. And boy, did it cause stress. It didn’t help that Carla discovered that we’re getting less opening in these new windows than we have in our current ones.
What I must remember it’s that it’s during these times that breaks for momentary rest become very important. When work is less demanding, that’s when breaks can be full of relationships and mini-tasks. When it’s hard to keep up, that’s when my breaks need to be moments of nothingness.
I enjoyed getting to know Daniel on our ride to GAOS and dinner at Passage to India. He affirmed my position in life, that is, being uncomfortably comfortable in my suburban life and waiting for a specific call from God to go and do something specific. But he also spurred me to lead with the Gospel. Don’t try to do good things in hopes they bring you an audience for the Gospel. Bring the Gospel and do good things. At the same time.
I used to be Calvin’s dad. (The emphasis on “used to” is a hopeful one.) I wonder what Carla would say.
Carla and I failed to find Abel Gance’s Napoléon for gratis streaming online, so we talked on the loveseat about same-sex marriage, our church, the knowledge of good and evil and whether, and Psalm 91. We enjoy one another’s company and thoughts and genuinely admire one another. (Carla cleaned up dried sewage from our basement floor this afternoon.) As I sat down the kitchen table to close the day with a journal entry, we had the following nigh-Familypants-worthy exchange:
Carla: I like Josh Ambrose. Scott: He’s always playing the educated agnostic. Carla: I like that. Scott: That’s because you’re an educated agnostic.
The most significant thing to happen to me today was the realization by contrast that taking regular breaks and approaching work levelheadedly and results in better, more thorough work, especially when deadlines loom or demands careen my way. When I worked on the small version of the Visualforce contact form for the DiamondBack Direct pages today, as if Father Time himself was harrying me and as if urgency disallowed 5-minute breaks, my work was slower, sadder, and sloppier. When I calmed down, my work was higher-speed, happier, and haler.
(Please pardon the forced alliteration. I could scarcely resist.)
What’s more, you don’t learn anything when you hurry.
Hopefully I’m not just trying to be noble for my own sake.
I’m tired. I didn’t enjoy learning Bach’s St. John Passion this evening at Choral Society rehearsal. I’ve been working hard on DiamondBack’s migration to Salesforce. I carry a slight dread of singing lessons. Why?
In brief, je me suis surmené. And I think my heart, having been dragged along for years now in my mind’s crusade for productivity, order, self-control, and a final end to absent-mindedness, is flagging. Or perhaps it has been flagging a long while before this, but I hadn’t enough self-awareness to notice.
God, Your word to me about how to handle the human heart from Scripture is, I think, another monument along this now 16-month-long, post-Fiddler journey into letting my heart come alive. Thank You. And please keep going.
Further evidence that I just need do what I want to do: I felt lighthearted and happy when Carla and the kids returned from hanging out at Peters’ house and I was just wrapping up my Saturday to-do list.
By why should a list of tasks weigh on me so?
Anyway, we capped an evening of work on the Choral Society website and a watercolor portrait from a photo of Éa with the perfectly oneiric, rightly acclaimed, but not all that entertaining Un chien andalou. We’re nearing the end of the silent film era in our quest to watch our chronological way through the BFI Sight & Sound 2012 Critics’ Poll.
At the risk of sounding like a monster, I must report that today I lashed out in anger without warning at Sullivan by throwing his flying paper dragon hard at his upper chest after he flew it past my face a few times while I was trying to master parts of the above Choral Society piece.
He was astonished and on the verge of tears. Thankfully, I realized my error immediately, apologized quickly and profusely, and embraced him. He forgave me without hesitation.
In the end, it’ll be a good example to him of how to deal with sin. But aie, that look on his face.
I’ve got to get back to rehearsing when no one is around.
The above leaf dates from thirteen years ago. Kris sent it to me yesterday. A lot in me has changed since then. And a lot sure hasn’t. :)
Speaking of things changing in me, I relapsed into not trusting Carla to by my ally today as the weekend time she was spending on her first council meeting stretched into its third or fourth hour this morning. DON’T DO THAT.
On another note, one of the several reasons I’d like to stick hard to my bedtimes is that I want to put a tad more thought into this journaling. I won’t be leaving much for posterity if I rush through this.
Nevertheless, it’s 10:36pm, and I need to get to bed.
“Cease and know that I am God.”
— Psalm 46:10
I press too hard in most of what I do.
Today what was supposed to be a prayerful walk through Mom’s neighborhood ended up a reestablish who I am, who I’d like to be, and how to go from point A to point B: Follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes, yet know that God will judge you in the end. Don’t let what you’re not doing distract you from you are doing. (I’m especially prone to be guilty of that last one when the what-I’m-not-doing is the kids. I seem to forget that the best way to get back to the kids is to concentrate fully on what I’m doing.) Whatever you do, do it heartily.
After another Christmas morning, an afternoon wave of sleepiness, and a delicious, heartfelt Christmas feast courtesy mostly of Mom, the Stilson siblings, Felix, and Carla went to see the above movie as our gift to one another. It was a good one, and I hope it’s a small beginning in a new tradition: My siblings and I purposely spending time with one another when we’re around. Carla is much better at that than I.
Jordan and Stephen divulged to me on our way up to Philipsburg for DiamondBack Christmas party day that playing vertical music for Keystone was the worst experience in their worship-playing careers. The motif of their report was that the people there were “mean.”
As Carla said upon my report of that revelation later this evening, “It’s good when wolves are wolves.”
I finished the proactive portion of my Christmas shopping today. All that remains is about seven tasks that are queued up in Remember the Milk. I mention this as the most significant portion of my day today because I’m still not completely comfortable with multi-step, very detail-oriented projects whose deliverable are people I. The discomfort is a lack of confidence that I have thought of everything and am making proper progress. It causes me to ponder over my project management systems instead of getting things done. And it leads to me idolizing and being selfish about my time.
Lord, as usual: Help!
In other news, we discovered last night that Zeppelin is on Spotify. I exclaimed to Carla that this news trumped the handbell concert as my high yesterday.
Carla called me intense this evening at the College Township holiday party and appreciation dinner at the Nittany Lion Inn. Too much face. She meant it as an constructive putdown. Boy, did it dampen my mood. But she’s right: I need to control my energy in social situations that are tied to exciting ideas or where I feel my reputation for something good (singing, progressive vision for the township) goes ahead of me.
Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people…so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.
— Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
A gentle sense of Your presence in my life suffused my soul today after work as I reflected on the verse above. Life was good today, and the verse above indicates that love makes us majestically holy. Wow.
I put the “concentrate mightily” bit into action today at work. And I enjoyed work more today than I have in a while.
Grumpiness is a sign that I have not properly handled some other negative emotion. Today, for instance, I didn’t properly handle my feeling tired, having run from to grocery shopping with Éa to unpacking the car to choosing a Christmas tree to decorating for Christmas with Janet over, all without taking a breath.
Put another way, I didn’t guard my heart, tending to it when it was tired, and as a result, it, my wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23) started to taste bad.
I need to start exploring and expressing negative emotions before they herniate as grumpiness.
(Once again, this mini-revelation came after I asked God to speak to me.)
We stopped in Danville on our way home from Rowland to pick up a brace-and-bit. Cassie Weaver had picked it up for us. We got to see her apartment, nibble on some fudge her mom had graciously given her to give to us, watch a few minutes of the PSU-Wisconsin football game, and then treat her to chicken cheese steak dinner at the sub shop across the street from the Danville Sub Shop, whatever its name is.
All that to say: I’d like to start incorporating friendly and relaxing stopovers into all our trips. Doing so would break up the drive, build relationships, and often lead to yummy food.
Shortly after praying tonight that God help me connect with Him, I was reminded that I feel most connected to Him when I apply deliberate, singular concentration to whatever it is I’m doing. I’m so easily distracted by other things I want that I think this serial single-mindedness good practice regardless of its capacity for facilitating divine connection.
NB: Not only concentration, but might. As it’s written: “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23) and “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
“You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mould are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice.”
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (p. 53–54), in response to “Is it true that Christians must be prepared to live a life of personal discomfort and sacrifice in order to qualify for ‘Pie in the Sky’?”
The recent thing You’ve been emphasizing to me is the part he says about folks with the ‘heroic mould.’
At Barb’s prompting at church today with some help from having talked with Ethan last night, I recapped what I meant by church last week having changed my life: In the same way that I’ve ceased wanting to be a great singer and begun just singing, blowing away my received application of Matthew 24:14 has finally allowed me to cease wanting to be a great Christian and begin just Christ-ing.