I recently read Schedule, Interrupted at ChristianityTodayOnline and was glad I did.
God's school is not like most. It's not regimented, age-adjusted, fixed in its curricula. The classroom is life itself; the curriculum, all of life's demands and interruptions and tedium, its surprises and disappointments. In the midst of this, through these things themselves, God hands us an abacus and tells us to tally it all up.You see, I've always struggled with time management. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but my dilemma has always seemed to come down to feeling/thinking I had to conform to somebody else's schedule all the time, or somebody else’s idea of a daily schedule, rather than figure out for myself how to use my time. This is not so much the case any more, but I do get the occasional stricken feeling when I hear of someone who lives by a really tight, full schedule and gets so much done. That's the part that always got me -- always feeling as if I should be getting more done, or different things done (even though I usually did, and still do, get an awful lot of good things done). I now recognize what a tyranny this is (and always did, really, though only recently was able to substantially escape it.)
I've also always had a very hard time limiting my activities to fit into a 24-hour day. I have many interests and abilities as well as responsibilities, and there just isn't time to do everything justice. I've had to decide what to pursue when and to what extent (which I suppose everyone has to do), and it’s never been easy.
It's been difficult for me to find a balance of work and rest, and to prioritize activities properly. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It just seems that, where so many people solve their balance and priority issues by scheduling their lives, I go the other way. See, I just can't stand the pressure and demands of a schedule. Not that I don't live by the schedules of things that affect my life as well as a loose schedule of my own (or, rather, a loose routine) -- as a member of a busy family and a mother of young children who home schools, I must. It's just that I can't get things done right if I'm always trying to follow a schedule. I always find myself feeling squelched and trapped by a completely planned-out day. (Actually, one of the main reasons my family homeschools is our belief about schedules, schooling, and life as articulated in the above quote.)
Now, the flip side of this is that it's easy to become undisciplined, or, rather, fail to honor the top priority of any given moment because of something else I'd rather be doing. Fortunately I'm also conscientious enough not to become too undisciplined; I have a strong sense of responsibility (probably too strong!) that helps keep me doing what I should be doing. (Note that I said that it “helps”...:-) ).
Unless, however, I have to deal with a big problem, illness, or great emotional distress. These things are very difficult to schedule into one's life; they kind of show up whenever they will regardless of what you have on your docket. Now, discipline keeps going with what must be done as much as its charge is able, and succumbs to whatever the trouble is during "break" time. But, sometimes, perhaps, discipline also requires one to temporarily set aside the "schedule" in order to deal with the trouble. A scheduled life doesn't really accommodate this well, though; nor does a busy life, and who doesn't have one of those?
I write this at a time when the church talks much about being purpose-driven. This is a good thing, but we ought to practice a bit of holy cynicism about it. We should be a little uneasy about the pairing of purposefulness and drivenness. Something's out of kilter there. Drivenness may awaken purpose or be a catalyst for purpose, but it rarely fulfills it: More often it jettisons it.A common characteristic of driven people is that, at some point, they forget their purpose. They lose the point. The very reason they began something-embarked on a journey, undertook a project, waged a war, entered a profession, married a woman-erodes under the weight of their striving. Their original inspiration may have been noble. But driven too hard, it gets supplanted by greed for more, or dread of setback, or force of habit.
Drivenness erodes purposefulness.
The difference between living on purpose and being driven surfaces most clearly in what we do with time. The driven are fanatical time managers-time-mongers, time-herders, time-hoarders. Living on purpose requires skillful time management, true, but not the kind that turns brittle, that attempts to quarantine most of what makes life what it is: the mess, the surprises, the breakdowns, and the breakthroughs. Too much rigidity stifles purpose. I find that the more I try to manage time, the more anxious I get about it.
Boy, ain't that the truth! (I can say that on a blog called “Intellectuelle,” can’t I?) I find this with housework too. The more I try to get my house cleaned up, the more anxious I become about it. My purpose in caring for my house morphs into an unrealistic vision of perfection that I couldn’t possibly achieve even if I were to clean 24/7. (Well, maybe I could, but I’ll never find out!) However, I also recognize that purpose alone doesn’t get the job done; there must be a plan, a structure, an organization of resources – if even a loose and flexible one – in order to achieve a purpose’s goal. But the structure should serve the purpose, not the other way around.
(No, I haven’t read The Purpose-driven Life, or The Purpose-driven Church, nor the purpose-driven anything...I’ve got plenty of purpose!)
