Back in the Saddle Again…

If you read my blog a little over year ago, you remember me laboring on & on & on & on about how fearful I was to go on a 12-month Sabbatical from my day-to-day work with InterVarsity.  I knew once that big change happened all these others would follow…

Beginning a new position, having another baby, getting “serious” about my M.Div program, calculated focus on my book, etc.

And just like I thought, all of these transitions have piled up on each other (only I’ve now added the desire to maintain a daily blog –which I happen to love doing but represents another thing to be “thinking about”).  Point is, now that I’m back to work -as exciting as it is to be in my “dream job”- I’m finding myself, well, sad.

Essentially, I’ve had 3 full official “business days” to choose what to do with my time.  I was telling the Lord today about how overwhelming that is & wondering if I’ve used them well.  I’m in this great big job now where instead of thinking about one student chapter on one campus, I’m thinking about how to move forward ministry on several different campus with student chapters that may or may not exist yet.  Which leaves me feeling, well, inadequate.

Translation: there’s any number of things I could do: thousands!  Or, on the other hand there’s a giant list of what I couldn’t or shouldn’t focus on just yet.  And that leaves me feeling, well, guilty.

I’m still lumbering through the book Getting Things Done which I am convinced will change my life if only I could figure out how to implement it!  It feels so doggone confusing to me.  I was actually considering today that I should buy The Complete Idiots Guide to Getting Things Done. 🙂  Until I get this system down-pat, I feel sort of, well, unproductive.

On a happy job-related note, Dave & I hosted WMU students at our house for a back-to-school gathering.  To plan for it, we sat at Panera & met for a whopping 4 hours where in the 4th hour I looked at my husband & said “Dave, I’m really bored.  We have to end this meeting.”

(Our new motto is: when at work treat each other like co-workers not spouse’s…because of course, duh, co-workers are nicer to each other than spouses are!)!  It was the best I could do.

After that, I raced to the grocery store for snacks, raced home to help Dave clean & vacuum, raced to pick up Ransom & feed him frozen waffles for dinner, raced to prepare for the Bible study I would lead & only had enough time before students arrived to put on another layer of deodorant.  My heart was also racing.  All that left me feeling, well, actually, a little faint.  No worries, from now we’ll clean & get snacks ahead of time.

Here’s a few shots of our incoming freshman -woot, woot!

But I tell you, after leading a 30 minute Bible study with the students, I was on top of the world realizing again how awesome it is to get to do what I love for a living.  Which leaves me feeling, extremely grateful.