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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

How Not to be a Christian DoucheRocket per PastorJosh

Every time I visit my blog, for the brief number of minutes I have between swearing I'm going to shave my legs and reading another chapter in The Scarlet Letter, I promise myself that there's more to me than Little Navajo and it's really time I got back to talking about what I'm learning, failing to learn or spectacularly failing to learn because most things in my life can be sorted by one of those three categories.

Take, for example, the reason I'm mostly absent from the interwebs these days:  PastorJosh's statements regarding my EPIC FAIL approach to God and life in general.

(Ha.  If he reads this he's totally going to be all insulted.  And then my dad will spend the next three weeks asking him if he's mad.  And he'll say no, but he'll really mean yes because I basically just told you he's a judgmental fool.)

I guess a diplomatic person would just say he started sermon series on Christian living and seeking God.  (I prefer interpretive meanings, though.  They make conversation so much more exciting.)  And, like any good church goer, I diligently highlighted and made notes on my Nook so I could review the concepts at some later date.  (Like five years from now.)

Somewhere in the middle of all that business, though, was this nagging push to "redeem the time."

Unlike John Wesley, my push toward redeeming the time had little to do with taking my life back from the yawning jaws of sleep.  (Frankly, Little Navajo is ensuring that fewer and fewer hours are dedicated to my formerly favorite activity so there's not much to "take back" at the moment.)  Instead, I think God is trying to claim me from the grip of "Once Upon a Time" and Pinterest.

(I seriously don't understand it.  I'm disgusted with the introduction of Mulan and the Dread Pirate Roberts, but I'm enthralled with all of my fairy tale characters.  Why was Sleeping Beauty left behind?  Why is Rumpelstiltskin the only one still capable of manipulating magic?  And Mulan?  Really?)

It's more than that, though.  To some degree, I had been forgoing responsibilities for the sake of fellowship, fun or mindless entertainment.  Necessity took a backseat to my celebratory attitude, because, frankly?  This part of my life has been an overwhelming miracle and I want to acknowledge that fact with as many people as possible as often as possible.  Restaurants!  Laughter!  Movies!  That's real celebration.  No one puts exclamation points behind staying home, doing laundry or lesson planning.

And yet there's something about not wearing dirty underwear that's appealing to me.

It's so easy to recognize priorities verbally and so difficult to follow through with that prioritization, isn't it?  In fact, here's what my priorities sound like:


Clearly, I have things in working order.

But if you pay attention, here's what my priorities look like:


I mean, it's not like my verbal priorities are completely ignored.  There's just no discernible pattern that dictates how I order my time to value those priorities.  And honestly?  I want Favorite to feel like a priority just like I want to be a priority in his life.

So I'm learning to set goals for work each day instead of trying to clear my desk completely, getting overwhelmed and then giving up.  To pray and study scripture regularly.  To spend the occasional Saturday at home to catch up on laundry and relax.  To say no to things that sound awesome and repeatedly ignore what really needs my attention.

And it also means allowing myself less time each day to share my lack of learning.

I'm still looking for a happy medium in blogdom.  For now, two to three times a week seems sufficient.

But sometimes words need to be shared.  And I have a lot of them...

How do you navigate priorities?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bahaha! I love the title. I always want to use the word "douche" in posts but never do...

I was just talking priorities with a friend today. Like you, I need some work in this area, and a lot of discipline.

Mindee@ourfrontdoor said...

As for Mulan - I know!!! Totally ridiculous. And Peter Pan is NOT a fairy tale. And it must be said - those soul suckers were an obvious rip off of Death Eaters.

Not that I'm going to stop watching of course.

You can fold laundry WHILE you watch. :)

TheView_Pastor said...

I totally do not think you are a Christian douche-rocket. I think you are quite awesome just for the record but glad you get some takeaway from our group conversations on Sunday morning that are more me talking and hoping you all listen :) and yessss i am mad, very mad. Tell you Dad :)