It's summer. That means cut-offs, bonfires, ice cream, and boredom. One fantastic thing about the summer is that most of us don't have a full week of school to keep us busy (sorry homeschoolers who are still trudging through Saxon - I feel your pain). That usually means a lot of free time and the question of what to do with it.
I've been asking that question lately. I have a particularly free summer ahead of me and I'm a little short on ideas. One thing that will make it into my daily schedule is a couple hours of writing. I've got more time to focus on improving my skills now that they are not needed for research papers. I'll also be spending a lot of time running and swimming. But other than that, I don't have a lot going on.
Actually, what to do with my summer has entered into my prayers almost every day recently - having nothing planned has kind of been getting to me.
The first thing I had to realize is that Summer 2017 isn't actually "my summer." I have the habit of calling it that, but it's not in any way accurate. Just like the rest of my time belongs to God, so does the summer. It's not my summer - it's God's summer.
That only changes the thought process though. I am still faced with more free time than I know what to do with. But the question has now changed to what does God want me to do with all that free time?
That's a little bit of a hard one to answer. Chances are, He's not going to write me a detailed e-mail with everything He wants me to accomplish in the next few months. So here's my current conclusion, based on a lot of thought and prayer: I just need to live.
Woah, crazy, right?
What I mean by that is that maybe I don't need to be obsessing over what I'm supposed to be doing or finding some big thing to fill up a lot of time. Yes, stuff like that happens (camps, jobs, writing, etc.), but I don't need to seek it out in order to feel fulfilled. Living day to day can be just as satisfying as doing huge things.
Living isn't just going from thing to thing to thing. It's also stuff like turning on the oven so your brother can make cookies. Or maybe it's reading a book to better understand some aspect of theology. Or it could be helping with dinner because you have the time to do that.
I can't stand going to bed and feeling as if I haven't done anything all day. It drives me crazy. I used to think that meant I needed to do some big thing or complete a checklist every day. But it actually means I need to be a good steward of the time that has been given to me. If that means finishing a huge project, great. If it means going for a walk, reading a book, and swimming with my siblings, also great. The noteworthy things don't define me and I don't need them to fulfill me. Being a good steward isn't just doing the intense and big stuff that gets noticed. God gives us big blessings and little blessings. We do big things and little things. There's a place for both.
I guess my main point today is that we don't always have to be in search of what we think are important things to do. It's okay to just take what comes day by day and do it with all your heart.
-Kira
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. That the person who is annoying you to no end by copying your every action is doing so because he admires you. It's true and it's a really great thing to remember when you find yourself getting irritated by people doing said imitating.
But what about the flip side? What if you're the one doing the imitating?
When I find myself trying to copy or follow someone, I have to start asking questions. For example:
Who do you want to imitate?
Usually friends.
In what do you want to copy them?
All sorts of things - relationships with siblings, when they do their math, what shoes they wear, etc.
Why do you want to do what they do?
Now this is the tricky one. Why exactly do I want to follow in their footsteps? It's often because I admire them and I want other people to admire me too. But the Bible says there's a problem with that. I wasn't made to fit into someone else's blueprint - to take the same classes, listen to the same music, or have the same job. I was made to be special and unique.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27
I was made in the image of God. You were too. Neither of us were created to mold ourselves into someone else's image - we were given one at the very beginning.
The Creator Who made us to be like Him knows us so intimately and loves us so deeply that it shouldn't matter what people around us think or if we match what they do. He doesn't want us to try to be a carbon copy of another one of His creatures - He wants us to be ourselves.
Next time you catch yourself trying to copy someone else, think about why you're doing it. Is it because you genuinely want/need to do it or maybe because you want to be a miniature of them? You don't need to be someone's clone. Your Creator made you just as He intended.
-Kira
I'm back! Sorry for the three or four weeks of no posts. A lot has happened (some of which actually pertains to this blog post :).
Anyway, I'm not writing to give excuses today. I'm writing to tell all you people about something I've learned over the last couple months (and am still learning).
Back in February, I was reading through Philippians for devotions and I hit Philippians 4:11. It goes something like this:
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
That verse has been haunting me ever since.
Of course, there's the initial conviction of "Wow, I'm not even in prison and I'm unhappy with stuff in my life!" But this particular thing turned into more than that.
Last month, our family went down to Florida for about a week as a vacation. After the first couple days, one of my sisters got sick. I followed the next day. It just felt like a really bad cold, so we kept going to Disney and Universal and just took cold medicine like it was going out of style. A couple days later, one of the boys started getting sick. Our last day there, five of us were down and we couldn't leave the house.
When we got home, we figured out that we had all caught strep throat and that was why our symptoms were so weird. Eventually, people started getting better, but I couldn't seem to quite kick it. That may or may not have been partially due to my insistence upon playing soccer a few days after we got back. Anyway, I was down for a while longer than everyone else and ended up with a small sinus infection just to make things more interesting. Strep sapped my energy and made me achy and tired - essentially to the point of not wanting to move very much.
(I promise there is a point to this long and rambling story.)
Once I finally got better, I started going for my morning runs again. I hadn't run for a couple months because of shin splints and it was incredibly exciting to finally be able to get back into it. Unfortunately, four days in, I injured my neck pretty badly. I was stretching to loosen up and something popped, leading to pain, blacking out, and the inability to move my head.
That meant a week and a half of laying in bed with no running, no soccer, no driving, and no school. For the first few days, I couldn't even hold up a book long enough to read.
Hours upon hours of Netflix in bed was not how I had imagined spending that time and I wasn't happy. At the end of the first week I ended up crying just because I didn't think I could take the pain and the helplessness and frustration any more.
Back to Philippians.
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
That was some situation I was in. Paul probably didn't want to be in prison any more than I wanted to be sick or stuck in bed. But he was able to say that he was content. I wasn't.
But that verse just kept coming back to me.
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
I had a plan for all that time I was out of commission and it did not involve being sidelined. God had a different plan though and guess what - His won.
This post is about contentment. I wasn't content with my circumstances and situation, but God's been working on me. I have by no means perfected this quality - far from it. But now I'm on the lookout for ways to be content in whatever situation I am.
-Kira
