The summer of this year was a struggle. 

I was really tired, yet wasn’t acknowledging it; I was already beginning to grieve the impending “loss” of my first son to college; I was aware (and therefore guilty) of the gap between the haphazard summers of my childhood and the conscripted summers of my own children; the church was moving to our ministry building while a 6 month renovation project had started…Lots of reasons for life to be difficult in Scott Peck’s words.

In late August we took a dive trip to Bonaire and for the first time I reread my journal entries. Three times it looked like the Spirit had given me a Word, three times I had ignored it. But sitting on the beach at sunset in Bonaire was the ticket. The Word was “Work Less. Pray More.” 

That was it. No flourish or exceeding comfort. No parenting or pasturing guide.  Just “do less of your own action and pay more attention to my action.”

So since the first week of September that’s how I’ve tried to order my life. I get up earlier to just sit. I don’t have an agenda; I’m not trying to work my way through a book or study guide. I just get up while it’s dark and quiet. Sometimes I open my Bible and journal but sometimes I don’t.  And I just say “Here Am I. May it be done to me according to thy Word.” 

It’s changing my life.

There is some distance that is beginning to form between my actions and me. My ego investment is lessening and my anxiety and fear is ebbing. Not all the time. But slowly I am beginning to live what I’ve been preaching: that saving the world is God’s business; we just get to tag along.

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