Sabbatical Update 1

Last Sunday as I was listening to Bobby’s message at Element I really was feeling God moving in my head. It just seemed that everything Bobby was saying was clicking in my brain. (P.S. It was the last message in a series he did called “why do we do what we do?) I started asking myself why I am doing what I am doing and where the heck I am trying to go and where I have been allowing and not allowing God to play into this.

By the end of the service, only one thing seemed really clear to me: I felt an extremely strong urge to shut myself off from the world for a week. (minus one hour a day of having phone/email one) I realized that I have not STOPPED in TEN YEARS! I have been over-committed and running in too many directions since I was 14. I need a week to disconnect from everything and re-evaluate where my life is at and where it is going. I also stink at the whole prayer and reading thing, and I wanted to really refocus on that area of my life too. I decided it was now or never, so I finished out last week and then made preparations to begin my sabbatical the following Saturday (I even asked my husband to go stay with friends for a week so I could be completely isolated)

What I didn’t plan for what to fall hard on my tail and get sick as a dog on Thursday. I spent almost all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in bed. Sunday I’m pretty sure that I slept for 16 hours in a 24 hour period. I felt terrible and sounded terrible. I had to call Allstate about an account error and the Indian woman on the other end of the phone instructed me to go to the hospital!! She said I was doing myself a disservice by self-medicating and that I needed to see a doctor! haha! I believe in good olde fashion sleep, chicken soup, nyquil and as several people instructed me this go-around, zinc.

So, as Monday comes to an end, this is the first day I have actually stayed awake all day, though it was almost noon before I woke up. I feel much better now. So, back to the sabbatical thing.

Between Saturday-Monday, I feel like I can say I’ve had one solid first day. I’ve been reading a lot of scripture and doing a lot of thinking. I’m still not really good at the praying thing. My prayers seem to all be short and kinda the same thing. I’ve been a Christian for half my life but I just can’t seem to get that spiritual aspect of my life down. I emailed an old professor who used to talk about meditating to get some advice from him.

What have I done so far? For starters, I thoroughly cleaned my house. I knew I couldn’t sit in here for 7 days if it was messy. Friday I stocked up at the produce market and I’ve been eating only raw fruits and vegetables. I figured I might as well cleanse my body. Other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.

Recently I read this post on Donald Miller’s Blog. He talked about figuring out what he did and did not like in his life over the last year. It was rather eye-opening for him so I decided to try it for myself. I thought really hard about a lot of the things I did and didn’t do in 2010. I realized that so many, if not all, of my dislikes about my life were things I had full control over. So clearly, I need to make some changes in my actions. I won’t share them all, but here were some of things on my list:

Likes:

My daily photo blog (which is almost 2 months behind and I plan to catch up this week)

traveling (went to D.C and Denver and spent a lot of time in TN)

5k’s

having a clean house

TV series with hubby

coffee dates with friends (I feel like so much of my life growth in the last year occurred over great conversations with intelligent people)

chopping my hair off

photoshoots

dates with hubby (which were not often enough)

and several others

 

Dislikes:

gaining wait (like 10 lbs this year!)

oversleeping (did this quite a few times. it’s an embarrassing apology to make)

gossiping (i feed off of it when it’s around me but it makes me feel gross inside)

procrastinating

most of the concerts i went to (i’m getting old i think….)

A certain person in my life who breeds negative energy

not reading books

over-committing myself

eating bad foods

not exercising

and several others

 

I’m glad I took the time to think about this list over a couple days. All of the things I don’t like are really, really easy to fall into but yet so easy to control. It showed me that even though I think I really love that Publix ice cream and should buy it to make myself happy, I’m actually not making myself happy because it doesn’t make my body feel good and contributes to the weight gain I disliked about myself.

So yeah, that’s been my sabbatical so far. I plan to update again. I realized that there are a few bloggers I follow who openly share about their lives, even the painfully honest truths, and their writing inspires me. So, another thing that has come out of my time away has been that I was to share more about what I’m thinking and experiencing. Maybe someone will read it, maybe not. But if reading others’ experiences has influenced me positively, the least I can do is try and give some back to the world

 

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