Box

It's been a while since I wrote. In a lengthy adventure, all sorts of things happen. This time, I was delayed by death.

My older brother Jay and a beloved aunt both passed away. The first death occurred two weeks before the end of the semester. The second one came five days after the semester's last day. These two losses were twenty days apart.

With the Student Development Office, I arranged a one-week extension for my coursework and finished all of it inside the semester. This was the best option, since I'm already committed to completing a summer course, and I must take three required preliminary exams and a German exam in August. In addition, we are anticipating the company of Joshua and a special friend arriving from Indonesia on June 17th.

How did I do it all in May? How will I do it all in June, July, and August?

It's very helpful to use the strategy of a time box for challenging situations. I created the time box to help me complete tasks that are overwhelming or to complete tasks in seasons that are overwhelming. The time box is a box crafted with a beginning and ending time each day, which can be drawn visually on a calendar, schedule, or planner. Inside that time box, I commit to doing the very best work possible on a particular project. My list of tasks is limited, specific, and targeted towards a goal. I do not attend to anything else during that time. I do not answer the phone or the door or let internet distract me. Inside the time box, nothing is allowed to interfere with the project. Inside the box, I have a simple focus.

Outside the time box, I live the rest of my life. I do not neglect people. Most of my time boxes last for a few hours a day, and there is plenty of time leftover for all the remaining responsibilities and relationships.

When the time box ends each day, I leave it behind. When the deadline arrives for the project which was completed within the time box, I live with the consequences of whatever I could accomplish. In many situations, it is far better to do one's best within limitations and then accept the results and move on. This is what I will be doing with my summer.

Because of my very high stress, I will  use a set of time boxes to contain and control each of my projects and manage my workload---while making time for grieving and self-care. Phone calls and emails will be pushed to the weekends as much as possible. Saturdays will be the catch-all day for distractions, unexpected events, and miscellaneous tasks and errands. Sunday is a rest day. In addition, I have given myself permission to take a 20-minute break at any point when I need one.

The weekday time boxes look like this:

7:00 - 10:00 .............................Self-care

10:00 - 3:00 ............................ Summer Course

3:00 - 5:00 .............................. Housework

5:00-7:00 ................................ Meals

7:00 - 10:00............................. Reading

This structure will reduce the strain by limiting my effort and focus. I have found that boxes can make solid ground for shaky legs and softer light for tired eyes.

I hope you have enjoyed this peek into my strategy for hard times.

Nudge

It was New Year’s Eve, and I was on the fence. I had considered repeatedly whether I should join the #walk1000miles challenge with a group in Britain, which meant a daily average of 2.74 miles, 7 days a week. But I had not yet filled out the official form. I was concerned about whether I should make any commitments, aside from my PhD studies. Sure, I could just drop out if the walk project was too much, but I did not want to use January to start a venture which would consume precious time and energy, unless I was supposed to do it. Yes, finding the walking group was a happy serendipity, and I had been working up to 3 miles hikes on my walks in a state park. However, last spring, I had injured myself (again) and could not do any walking for months. Coming back from that injury was a slow process. I knew I needed to make some positive changes for continued health, but was this walking program a good tactic? What really captured my imagination was hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail in a year, which would mean an average of 6 miles a day, but I knew that was unrealistic. So I vacillated. I lingered. I waffled.

After a failed attempt to find the Rodin Museum downtown that afternoon, we decided to eat our New Year’s Eve dinner at P. F. Chang. My sister-in-law and her husband had given us a gift certificate, because we like the restaurant. At the end of our meal, the waiter brought us two fortune cookies. I opened mine, munching on the cookie while I squinted to read in the low restaurant light. I read this: “Tomorrow is a good day to start a new exercise.” It stopped me cold. Normally, I don’t rely on little paper messages in random cookies for restaurant customers. But this one nailed me. Tomorrow was the prescribed start date for #walk1000miles.

So I signed the official form. The next day, we went to Valley Forge to walk/run, and I found myself covering at least 6 miles. I had thought the trail was about 3 miles, which would have been a reasonable expectation. Since we moved here, the most continuous distance I’ve covered is 3 miles, when challenging myself—so I knew it was doable. My miscalculation gave me the gift of a heartening surprise. The next two days, I walked 3 miles each day. Then on the third day, I completed 5 miles, with minimal soreness afterwards. I had no idea I was so close to a break-through! Now, an added benefit has emerged: the longer walks have relaxed me. My former worries have been replaced with inexplicable serenity. I’m sleeping extremely well, deep and long, after enduring weeks of short, restless nights.  

Later that week, I remembered the fortune cookie note. I pulled it out of the pencil case where I had stuffed it and taped it to my calendar. I sent up a warm prayer, “Lord, you are amazing. You arranged for that cookie to come to me at the right time, didn’t you?” Then a clear, quiet thought zinged right through my mind: Yes, I did. Of course, fortune cookies do not have real power in themselves. I’m not suggesting that we follow fortune cookie messages. My point is that God can use many means of communicating with us. I knew this note was not a coincidence. This note was the gentle nudge I needed.  I knew it immediately by the burning in my heart, which reminded me of one of my favorite verses at the end of Luke's gospel:

 “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ ” – Luke 24:32 ESV

Go Forth

At the front of my planner for 2017, I have included a poem I just discovered.

Becoming

Once or twice in a lifetime
a man or a woman may choose
a radical leaving, having heard
Lech L'cha--Go forth.

God disturbs toward our destiny
by hard events
and by freedom's now urgent voice
which explode and confirm who we are.

We don't like leaving,
but God loves becoming.
                              - Rabbi Norman Hirsch, God Loves Becoming

Lech L’cha are the 5^th and 6^th words in the Hebrew text of Genesis 12:1, “YHWH said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country and from your kindred and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” After setting out, Abram received a new identity as "Abraham" in Genesis 17:5.

As I look back at 2016 and peer forward into 2017, it seems that a good life is really about becoming with God’s direction and power. Living well is about going forth, instead of shrinking back.

Change is difficult. We don't like leaving a familiar life. Research has shown that people tend to overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the benefits that a change would bring. This is even more likely for people who are successful, who have acquired satisfying relationships, significance, and prosperity through diligent effort. Why should all those assets, achieved through years of labor, be set aside for a risk? Yet God knows we need to move forward in faith, in order to be fully alive and to become like him.

Sometimes, he helps us by hard events.

For me, becoming has meant leaving a familiar life behind, taking chances, being a beginner again, and moving outside my comfort zone. This has been hard to do. My success makes it even harder to continue. For me, going forth and becoming are more challenging with every additional year, because I think it will cost me more. Each year, staying where I am, and enjoying the benefits of what I have already done, looks more appealing. The only thing which pushes me onward is the unsettling conviction that God is calling me to go a bit further. Over the last seven years, I have learned that my rising personal cost yields a rising personal wealth—the kind of wealth which God gives to all who go forth with him. This wealth is an accrued ability to influence other lives.

In my going forth, I have uncovered a dynamic principle: God’s power for changed lives through me corresponds to the degree of personal change he has worked in me.

Rewards for going forth multiply with age, as they did for Abraham, who chose to go to a place he had never seen, with inspiring results for himself and for generations. In God's eternal economy, radical obedience produces multiplied benefits for mature sojourners and for others within their spheres of influence—some of these benefits are quite surprising. But most of us hesitate to leave what we have, because we are unable to calculate the benefits of radical change, of going forth with God to something entirely new. How can we solve this dilemma? First, we need to be honest about our blindness and ask for God's help with managing ourselves. Next, we need to choose carefully with proper motives. Finally, we need to take action and rely on God's goodness.

When we are called to a radical leaving---we can change the world with our "yes." Even if we have no idea what God is doing, we can be assured that he will not waste our obedience. Even when our performance in a new arena disappoints us, he can work wonders. Because he is always with us, we do not travel alone. Because he is with us, we display his wisdom, power, and redemption, as our years rise to a crescendo, climaxing in heavenly glory. Our stories can be life-giving to generations who need to see that God exists and that he rewards those who trust him.