Tag: time

The Slow Work of God

Tina Leave a comment

This blog is still alive. Hi.

I have some drafts waiting to be finished and posted, but as always, I find myself a bit unsure if I should share them. Like they’re still quite unfinished and the thoughts were all over the place.

(That, and I’m also working hard with releasing a new short story, and revising my next book. :) )

I’ve been restless lately, though. It could be I’m just having a bit of difficulty being grateful for what I have because it’s far easier to complain or resist. Sometimes I wake up with a lot of anxiety for my day and then I go through it wishing it’s over so I can go back to what I want to do.

But the Lord says, be patient. Be patient because He’s working. Be patient because He’s faithful. I admit that I’m not the most patient person in the world and sometimes waiting is painful (and boring) but right now it’s what He’s asking, and I’m trying my best to do just that.

So we’re talking about patience, and I ran into this today while reading Fr. James Martin, SJ’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything over breakfast. I needed to read this over and over, so I thought I’d share it on the blog, too – in case you need it, too. (Emphasis is mine, btw)

That, and I wanted to say that this blog is still alive. :)

Patient Trust
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ excerpted from Hearts on Fire

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

(source)

* Featured image by Monoar Rahman from Stocksnap.io

All These Things (5): May Edition

Tina Leave a comment

(Image credit.)

I decided to check my Feedly earlier for a quick mental break and started going through the long Relevant Magazine feed backlog. I saw this article entitled, Anxiety is a Spiritual Issue, and found this:

Maybe, even though God made the night and knows there is nothing in it to fear, He gave us stars to light it because He knows we might be afraid anyway.

I had to stop and read it all over again. There’s something about this that’s really comforting. It could be the mention of stars (that I always, always love), or it could just be the plain truth that this line carries.

The rest of the article is very good, too. :)

* * *

A few weeks ago,  I I lost my train of thought there — that phrase has been here since this morning when I started this post, and now I can’t remember what I was supposed to write. I’ve been experiencing this lately, along with other things that I figure is a sign of aging: wanting to sleep early, choosing not to drink alcohol, going home before midnight. I haven’t quite mastered not eating all the good sinful sinfully stuff like bacon, chocolates, and extra amounts of cheese in everything, or actually getting my work-out time back, but I’m getting there. (I started taking my coffee black, with a single serving of stevia. Yay, me?)

Anyway, the “shock” of realizing that I’m not getting any younger since I turned 29 hasn’t worn off, so I’m trying to make wiser choices to prepare myself for the next decade. Because…well, it’s about time, right?

* * *

Speaking of time, I’m right smack in the middle of writing my next novel. I signed up for the Spark NA class just to get me writing. It’s worked so far, but like with the first writing workshop I joined at the start of the year, I am not doing so well with time management, because work and other things. I have made significantly more progress than I would outside of a class. Slow and steady progress, as always.

I’m gonna work really hard to get this out this year. Especially since I really, really like my new Lead Interest.. :”>

* * *

One more, before I go back to proofreading: It’s the first of June on Monday. Can you believe it?

Passing Time

Tina 2 Comments

I feel like I’m running out of time.

It’s not like my clocks are set to run faster than anyone else’s. Or that I live in the future, or the past, or whatever. As far as I know, I still live in the same time dimension as everyone else.

But I still feel like I’m running out of time, all the time.

Have you ever felt that way? Like days just pass by, and soon they’re weeks, and then months, and before you know it, the year is over. And you feel like the days pass by without leaving a mark, and sometimes I can’t even remember what happened at a certain time – as in I have a hard time recalling what I did last Tuesday, or last Saturday.

I hate it the most on weekends – when all of sudden, the weekend is ending, and I’m back to the daily grind. I feel sad because it’s another week, and it feels like everything’s the same even if in reality, it’s not. I mean, my job is anything but routinary. Or perhaps it’s not about the routine, but how things just seem so endless, and sometimes, pointless.

Thinking about all of that – how endless and pointless it all seems – makes me exhausted, to the point that I just want to stop, and stay in bed. The most I was excited about was doing nothing, and when faced with commitments outside, I get stressed out because again, I feel like I’m always running out of time. Like there isn’t enough time for me to do the things I need to do for my commitments…

…and yet I still have time to sleep in, to read, to lounge around and do things. I have time to do that, while finishing the things I said I finished.

Then I go through it all again, and I’m just tired, and all I want to do is sleep and rest.

But then there are those commitments.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I swear, this must be where personal crisis comes from.

Time stops for no one.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel this way, and I keep on pointing it to how I am still settling into my new role at work. But it’s not just that, isn’t it? I mean, work is work, and it can be endless, but it’s not always the reason why I feel these things. Perhaps it’s because I’m back to managing our household, and I’m not so used to doing it again (even if I should be, especially since I do it every year anyway). Things are changing and changing and I am so out of my comfort zone, and I feel like I cannot keep up, and sometimes I panic and I want to yell STOP, because I need time to orient myself.

At first I thought that I am afraid of running out of time, but really, I’m afraid of running out of time for myself. That’s the thing with being so used to having time for myself in the past years – I feel like I’m entitled to it, even when I should be spending a better part of my day working. The reality is, I am not running out of time for myself – it would only happen if I let it, and I always have a choice. No matter how busy or crazy things get, I still have a choice. I forget that sometimes. I need to draw clearer lines, build better boundaries and respect them. And I need to remember that things do end, even if they seem so endless when I’m in the midst of it. They always end (even if it means something else starts right after).

I think the thing I need to do is to make time for the things that matter to me. I need to figure out what they are, and fight to have time for it. I am not a slave to my circumstances, and like I said: I always have a choice. So I need to make a choice to make time for the people and the things that give me joy. I need to resist the urge to lie down and do nothing, avoid sleeping in so I can wake up earlier and have time to do something that I want to do. There is a time for rest, yes, and I recognize and honor that, but more than half the time I say I am tired and I need rest, it’s just me being lazy. I need to distinguish which is which, so I know when to surrender to rest, and to fight the laziness.

I need to carve time for these important things, because if I don’t, then no one will.

Stop hitting the panic button.

I need to learn to be still. I need to remember that all of this in my life is just a period, and there’s infinitely more things that will happen later on. This is just a drop in the ocean, and it’s really not worth panicking over.

Relax, self. It’s okay, it’s all good. You are not running out of time.

After all, I serve and love a God who is the Author of Time, and He loves me back. What am I so afraid of?