Sooooo… It’s been a while.

I’ve tried numerous times over the last few weeks to retrace my steps and figure out where I lost the trail.  I remember having three speaking gigs in February, each requiring new content, and acknowledging to myself and others that most of my writing for about a month would be for work.  But then February came and went.  As did March.  And April…  May… and here we are mid-June and I struggle to find the path that got me here.  Not that I haven’t tried.  I’m really good at trying.  I’ve analyzed to no end why I never seemed to bounce back after that stint in February.  Why I have not had nearly the same time and energy I had prior to those events.  Why I just can’t seem to muster up something—anything—that even remotely resembles the drive I had just one month earlier.  And then…

I remember.

I got promoted in March.

And therein lies my problem answer:

I have conflicting priorities.  Because here’s the thing:

I love my job, and I do it well.

—AND—

I love to write, and I do it well.

But I don’t often—thanks to my friends chronic pain and fatigue—have the time and the energy to do both.

Which gets to the crux of the matter: the things I want to acheive—the things I feel a very clear and pressing calling toward—take both time AND energy and the two, for me, appear most days to be mutually exclusive.

I sit alone tonight (a rare occasion) as I type with my feet propped up out on my back porch, listening to the birds and the soft jazz coming from two yards over and watching the setting sun cast light and shadow, changing my yard every ten minutes—and it’s lovely.  Truly.  And I enjoy having a fleeting moment to myself to take a few tentative steps back toward this path I love so deeply and want so desperately to follow.

Until I remember I have a sermon to write.  And six sessions of a new video curriculum.  And four employee reviews, and interview questions for four new hires, and updated deadlines for a three-year initiative I’m responsible for spearheading.

And that’s when I am reminded of HOW MUCH I HATE BEING LIMITED.

There. I said it.

I hate this.

I HATE being limited in this way.

And yet this is where I find myself.  THIS—this no man’s land void of any water with which to water the tender shoots of all of my dreams and ambitions—this is where God has me.  On purpose.  And whether I think it is a good thing or a bad thing or just a THING depends on the day you ask me.

Or even the hour.

Before I went into work-mode in February, I’d begun a series on the Serenity Prayer.  Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  So seemingly simple, yet so very, very difficult.

We need to get back to that prayer.

I need to get back to that prayer.

Acceptance. Courage. Wisdom.

I don’t know about you, but I need all three in abundance.

And that’s going to take a whole lot of God.  And a whole lot less of me.

I hope to be back in the swing of things next week, picking up where we left off.

And until then, I’m going to enjoy writing my sermon—

and I’m going to let that, for tonight, be enough.

acceptance balance chronic chronic fatigue chronic pain courage fatigue limits pain serenity prayer