Entries from December 2008 ↓

Merry Christmas from Life Outside the Lines.  I hope your holiday was full of wonderful times spent with your loved ones!

Go to the ant, you slacker! Observe its ways and become wise…it prepares its provisions in summer; it gathers its food during harvest. — Proverbs 6:6,8 (HCSB)

Well, 2008 is rapidly coming to a close.  Christmas is just over a week away and New Year’s will follow quickly in a flurry of parties and fireworks.  The end of the year is always a time to reflect upon the last year;  it is a time to take stock of successes and failures, lessons learned, and times of personal growth.

2008 was a big year for me.  I “officially” graduated from college (long story), started attending a great local church and quickly became the Sunday School teacher for the Single 20s!  What else?  Oh yeah, I started Life Outside the Lines, obviously, and have begun notes for at least 2 books that should be in the works very soon.  Man, I am exhausted just writing about this past year.

The end of the year is also a time to look forward.  Many people like to make “resolutions” to lose weight, learn a new language, make more money or whatever.  While I agree that using the changing of the calendar as a “fresh start” is a great thing, resolutions just do not cut it for me.  I would be willing to bet that at least half of the resolutions set for the New Year are given up upon by the following March (I am guilty of this, for sure).  Resolutions are just too vague.  This year, I am going to set goals.

The most difficult part of goal-setting, I find, is to achieve a balance between definitive goals and those goals that are kind of further away, those may or may not get achieved.  Dustin Wax over at one of my favorite blogs, Lifehack.org, wrote a couple of articles detailing the difference between the two types, what he calls S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) and D.U.M.B. (Dangerously Unattainable, Monstrously Big) goals.  I think it is very important to have smart goals: they are easy to break down into micro-goals and measure in a timely way to provide the psychological motivation necessary to keep striving to complete them.  But I also know the value of setting goals that are so ridiculously big that you have no choice but to reach way outside of your limits and place all of your trust in God to have any hope of achieving them.

So, here are a couple of the goals I have set for 2009, in no particular order:

• Remain at current weight, but get body fat percentage to less than 18%.  That will require me to drop a bit of fat and gain some muscle.  This goal is easily measured and achievable, but it will require dedication past February, which will be the hard part for me.
• Pay off all debts.  Credit Card sits at about $4700 and Student Loans are hovering a just over $13,000.  So I currently owe people right at $18,000.  I have already started to take positive steps to achieve this goal: I have a written budget and recently signed up for an online spending tracker, Mint.  If you have never heard of this application, go check it out right now.  It is a completely free and useful tool to help you get your financial life back on track.
• Increase income by at least 50%.  That should not be very difficult at all if I can just land a decent full-time position somewhere.  If I stayed at UPS for a while after attaining FT work, I could easily increase my income by 150% for a while and goal #2 would be a breeze.
• Finish the manuscript for my serious book.  The one I started for NaNoWriMo was kind of a joke, I never really intended to pursue it past a first edit.  The story that I truly want to develop has not seen much paper, save for a few notes here and there.  10 pages per week is more than enough to get a novel-length piece of literature penned in a little less than a year.
• Write 3 well-written articles per week for Life Outside the Lines.  This one will just require some discipline to write and time to read for ideas.  The way to increase the readership of a blog is to provide regular, valuable information to the readers.  Achieving this goal should make possible the next:
• Bring the readership of Life Outside the Lines to over 1K.  Google Analytics says I have 145 or so subscribers right now, so I need about 800 more subscribers and regular readers.
• Spend at least 15 hours per week doing biblical research/study.  That might include taking an online class from a Christian University somewhere.  Or it may just be increasing my devotional time and setting to a more deep level.

Wow, that’s a bigger list than I thought.  But you know what?  I can do it.  I can do each and every one of the things on that list.  I have a vested interest in seeing every one of those happen and God promises that I can do all things through His Son (Philippians 4:13).  If it is the Lord’s will that these things happen in my life this year, then nothing can stop me if I put in the effort.  OK, I am ready to see 2009, bring it on!

What goals do you have planned for 2009?  I would love to hear about them in the comments section.

I had a rough day yesterday.  Nothing particularly terrible happened; it was a fairly normal day, in fact.  Wake up.  Breakfast.  Sit down to write.  Delete everything I just wrote.  Try again.  Fail.  Go to work.   Yeah, pretty normal.   I don’t know what it was.  Less than a month ago I missed an entire night’s sleep because I could not praise and thank God enough.   Yesterday I wanted to throw every last possession through my window and yell, “There! Everything else is gone, Lord, and I am ready to follow! Just lead me somewhere!” And I heard nothing.

Answer me quickly, LORD, my spirit fails.  Don’t hide your face from me, or I will be like those going down into the Pit.  Let me experience Your faithful love in the morning, for I trust in You.  Reveal to me the way I should go, because I long for You. — Psalms 143:7-8

I think I just felt alone yesterday.  I guess I have felt that way for a couple of days now.  Have you ever been in that place where you just feel cut off from the rest of the world?  Even when you have seen most everyone within the last week?  That is exactly where I am right now.  Communication has not ceased, but I feel like connection has.

I wish it were only people from whom I feel disconnected.  If I could hear God speaking to me, telling me that He still loves me even when I’m alone, I think I would be fine.   But I cannot even hear that.  I feel just like David in the end of Psalm 42: I will say to God, my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?  Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”…Why am I so depressed?  Why is this turmoil within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God. (vs. 9,11).

I realize that a good portion of this is my fault.  I have not initiated communication (both worldly and spiritually) like I should be.  If I want to make a connection, I am going to have to take the first step, I get it.   But it just feels so good to have other people desire to connect with me, you know?  In fact, one of the highlights of my day yesterday was a good friend writing on my Facebook wall.  Nothing deep, just saying hi, but it brought a really big smile to my face.  So thanks to her!  I know that everyone is busy, especially this time of year, so I am going to make more of an effort to let the people I care about know that they are special to me.  Not quite the same as having them tell me, but at least it will spark some dialogue, which will do for now.

I wish I had an inspirational verse to close this with, but in truth, they are still ringing hollow in my ears.  Even the last few lines of Psalm 42, which I quoted earlier, only provides a little bit of comfort.  I know that God has not abandoned me, but I still feel disconnected.  I will do the only thing that I know to do, because I know that it will work no matter how far off it seems, and that is to continue to seek the presence of God.

I know that each of you has felt like this before. What do you guys do when you feel alone and disconnected? Do you have any particular Scripture that you like to read? Any special tips for staying connected through the chaos of the holidays?  I would love to hear your thoughts.