A Big Rock.

"Quiet Time" has been overwhelming lately. Every time I try to sit and think and pray, I end up in one of two places: falling asleep or feeling paralyzed. To cope with it, I turn on the TV. TV allows you to do something while being awake, but it's certainly unfulfilling. I want to be doing something, but I'm incapable of sitting still without going catatonic.

Being rational and also being a former psych major, I say to myself, "What is the root issue here?" So I delve into myself as self-counselor (a common malady of people with 20 hours of Psych classes.) Self usually ends up skipping past "root issue" and pointing me straight towards solution:

A few months ago, self's solution was "mountain cabin in Alaska." This plan seemed like the perfect solution for a few weeks. I would live in a cabin at the base of a mountain. In my backyard would be a Class III river and ski lift. I planned to write books all day and travel as a speaker. My friends would visit me winter or summer to participate in their extreme sport of choice. This lifestyle would be funded by marrying a pilot for Alaska Airlines, who would be excited to have a home base for his travels. Also, it would result in lots of free tickets for me to visit friends and family who are far away. That was a few months ago. Eventually I realized the 4 hours of daylight in winter and the 4 hours of dark in winter would not leave me happy or healthy. I compromised the solution by deciding Washington was the best of all possible worlds. Self must be seeking a new solution, however, because today its plan is "move to Nashville and become a country songstress."

Obviously, the root issue is that whenever I try to figure out why quiet time isn't going well, my solution becomes "move." (I believe this is called escapism.) It doesn't really address the problem.

So--ignoring self's fantasy solutions, I refocus and revisit the problem. The problem is "being overwhelmed with busyness to the point of being ineffective in everything." Sound familiar? I've been in job transition for 2 1/2 months, so I've been straddling two offices and two sets of responsibilities while simultaneously training as a whitewater rafting guide and raising support. Not only have I become ineffective at all four of these tasks simultaneously, I have become an inconsistent relational being (i.e. relatively incapable of carrying on an interesting conversation and keeping up with friends and family across the globe.)

Last week, becoming fed up with this state of life, I said, "No more!" and began to adopt my personal mantra of, "If everything is important, then nothing is!" I started using that cheesy analogy about filling up a jar with the big rocks first and then the little rocks and then the sand and then the water in order to make sure your priorities are in order.

By Saturday night, I was sitting around a campfire with my staff and my kids and Bronco asked us, "What do you need to surrender?" I immediately said, "my schedule." So I threw this stick in the fire and said, "God, take my schedule. Show me what the big rocks are. I surrender my day-to-day to you, because you know that I stink at organizing it myself."

It felt good to say it outloud. It felt good to watch that stick burn. It felt good to feel that word "surrender" and all that it implies. But Monday still came, and the paralyzed feeling still pervades. It seemed for a few days that even though I'd "surrendered," all I'd really done was recognize the problem, not really surrender it.

Blah! When will it end!? When will I cease the catatonic life and embrace some sort of movement? The answer is YESTERDAY...

Because YESTERDAY, I stumbled upon my friend Lauren's blog. She shares a plan for her summer which includes her and a friend reading through the Bible in 12 weeks. This caught my eye because it was meaty and bold. (You can read about it here.) Suddenly, this was something I could get my hands on that didn't feel overwhelming, because it's a BIG rock. If I spend 2 hours a day the whole summer reading the Bible, then my schedule will certainly be surrendered and the priorities will have to flush themselves out accordingly.

AND--the 12-week idea is contingent on finding someone to do the read-through with you, so that once a week you can talk about it and offer extrinsic accountability. It just so happens that this Friday marked Friday-morning-coffee-buddy Erin and I's end to a 4-month meandering through Captivating (which was much more about coffee and counseling than it was about Captivating.) I asked Erin if she would embark on 12 weeks through the Word with me, and she gave a resounding "Yup." Because she also is wanting something meaty...and neither of us have ever read through the Bible before.

So. By August 31st, Erin and I will have read through the whole Bible. Meaty? Yes. Big Rock? Yes. Catatonic? Absolutely not. I'm praying wholeheartedly that God would do something to me through this process. It's the first thing I've considered in 2006 in which quiet time is not overwhelming. I can't wait.