About Time!

Well, my title is meant as a double entendre.  First, it is meant to express the fact that it is about time that we wrote another blog.  The last time we wrote was on November 18, 2011!!  Second, the frustration I face is about time, as in concerning time.  Since moving back to California, I feel like I am chasing the wind!  I am a whirling dervish, doing my work in Micronesia using technology (Skype, Internet, and telephone), researching potential interventions to lower abuse rates in Micronesia, running kids to school, choir, band performance or sports practices, and personally trying to make the HUGE adjustments to living stateside.  (This lifestyle being one of the adjustments--the fast pace, high stress environment.) Sitting contentedly on a bench with a student, looking at nothing in particular while the mosquitoes hungrily buzz about me, and feeling no compulsion to speak because just being together is enough, is a far and distant memory.  Taking the time to have relaxed conversations with friends I meet in the grocery store is another nearly forgotten concept.  Now I (and my friends) race through the shopping in an attempt to get to our next obligation on time.  Heaven forbid I should lose my calendar!  Each day is packed with multiple commitments and no future plans are ever made without consulting each family member's calendar!  Sigh.........  So, I actually am proud of my compulsive, rather perfectionistic self, for not keeping up with this blog.  There was a time I would not have allowed myself to make this healthy choice, but instead would have pushed myself to get it written, regardless of the negative impact it had on me or my family.  I suppose that this shift in values stems from my work in Micronesia.  It is no longer simply with intellectual assent that I can say that relationships are far more important than tasks.  I still have a long way to go to successfully live this out, but I am grateful that living in Micronesia has moved me closer to this beautiful truth.  I know Jesus had some thoughts on this too.  Remember his conversation with Mary and Martha?  So, I can't promise when I'll be writing another blog, but hopefully it will be before Eric and my upcoming trip to Yap.  In the meantime, in addition to the gazillion commitments on my calendar, I am busily trying to prepare a five-day conference on marriage and parenting that I'll be presenting while on that trip, and I'm trying to do it in a way that keeps what's most important at the fore:  God first, others second, and myself (and my tasks) last!