Getting My Priorities Straight

I've recently been chided by several friends about my severe absence from my blog. The easy answer is that I'm a teacher and with the school-year coming to a close, exams needing to be written, students dreaming of summer, and state standardized testing going on right now, I'm so tired I can't even think about having anything even closely resembling a life. (Plus for the last two Mondays I was doing a practice test and final test in computer class, which is now over!)

While all of that's true, it's not really the answer to my non-blogging. I've been in a little bit of a funk lately. I have this tendency to try and do life on my own. Generally I can handle it. But when I get overwhelmed, which is what happens to me at the end of the school year, I tend to shut down and let everything that isn't a felt necessity fall by the wayside. In other words, if it doesn't absolutely have to get done at a particular time on a particular day, it's going to get ignored in favor of a nap or doing something mindless like watching a movie I've seen a million times before.

Unfortunately for me, my relationship with the Lord is usually not as felt of a need as it should be. So, as more and more of my time gets put into my job and into collapsing into bed when I get home, less and less of it gets spent with the Lord. And when what He's teaching me is what gets blogged about, this means I have little to blog about.

My small group just started reading Paul Miller's book A Praying Life. I'm really enjoying it....or at least really learning from it. He talks in one of the early chapters about how our lives should be integrated. What he means is that our relationships with God should be part of every part of our lives. This seems like it would be obvious, but apparently, I'm a bit dense. But, after I read it, things started to make a bit more sense.

Teaching isn't separate from my relationship with the Lord. My relationships with my friends and my family aren't separate from my relationship with the Lord. They aren't all separate entities that don't relate to or affect each other. My life is my relationship with the Lord, so it's in my job. It's in my relationships. It's in everything. Or, more appropriately, it is everything. And thinking that it's just another thing for me to do means I end up tired and overwhelmed when I try and do life on my own. I'm not meant to do life on my own. I'm meant to do it with Christ. And when I do that, I can rejoice in my overwhelmedness for in my weakness His power is made perfect. And that's the power that gets me through the day (and will get me to June 2...).