Do The Next Thing

Elisabeth Elliott is known for being the wife of Jim Elliott and for her authorship of Through Gates of Splendour, Passion and Purity, and many other books about living the Christian life through the most difficult of circumstances.  My strongest memory of her, however, will always be the time I heard her speak in person.  A group of friends and I took a road trip from Tulsa, OK to Little Rock, AR to see her speak at a church.  During the speech, she spoke little of the grand moves we make in life and much of the mundane - feeding your children, doing laundry, etc.  This was interesting for me as a college freshman, even though she was discussing things I had not experienced.  It is rare to hear a speaker talk about regular, everyday worship acts rather than the big stuff, especially someone who has experienced as much big stuff as she as.  At the end of the night, there was a question and answers time, in which someone asked what to do when they felt overwhelmed by how much they had to do.  Every college student in the audience perked up their ears, expecting profound advice on how to give your worries over to God.  Her advice was this, "Do the next thing.  Since it isn't possible to do everything at once and sitting there thinking about it just makes even less time, do the next thing."  I went back to my dorm room that night and printed, "Do the Next Thing" on a sheet of paper.  It hung above my desk for four years, and it is still in my mind today.

This is a time of year when I have a lot on my plate.  Our school does a lot of activities at the end of the year because everyone wants to do their thing for the last time.  There are senior night games, final concerts for band and chorus, and that one last time a club will get to meet.  There are NHS inductions, senior dinners, and of course, graduation.  As the yearbook teacher, I am involved in most of these to varying degrees.  Whether I am there to take pictures at the senior game or enjoy a strings concert, I am there.  In preparation for the senior dinner, my staff and I make posters with each senior's photo and the logo of their college/military/job choice.  This takes a fair amount of time, and some of the students don't make their choices until the day before the dinner.  I also speak at this dinner, so it is important to write the speech.  The yearbook staff also constructs the senior slide show for graduation, which incorporates music, photos, and quotes from each teacher.  Pulling all of that together takes time and must be copied onto a jump drive for each student so it can be included with the gift they will receive at graduation, a Bible which all of the teachers have written in.  Oh yeah, add to the list that I need to go sign the Bibles.  We hold a fine arts pep rally for the day of yearbook distribution, and that is a big day.  Every year, I forget something, like filling out the event request so that the IT department will know what I need (note to self:  do that today). We are changing the way we do that event this year due to the explosive growth of our student body, so I'm still trying to figure out how to deliver all the books between rallies.  This is all in addition to the regular teacher duties and exam writing and blog posting and faculty meetings and lunch duties.

Please understand that I am not complaining about ANY of this.  They are some of my favorite parts of the job and a big part of what makes GRACE so special.  It's just a lot of stuff in a short amount of time, and it can get overwhelming.  You have times like that too.  It may not be the same stuff, but it we all experience times when we have too much to do and not enough time to do it (or at least, it feels that way).    Let me expand a just a little on the advice of Elisabeth Elliott.

1.  Do the next thing.  I'm going to start with that because it is so powerful in its practicality.  As long as you aren't doing anything, you have the same amount of stuff to do.  Let this be the time when the urgent rules and do whatever is due next.
2.  Start whatever you can as early as you can.  I cannot start working on the senior slide show in August, but I can start it in March.  Doing a few students a day throughout the month of April is much less daunting than doing it all in May.
3.  Do whatever you can whenever you can.  This seems like the same advice as #2, but it isn't.  There are times when I am sitting in the car, waiting to meet my parents for dinner.  This is a good time to work on the slide show.  If I have ten minutes before my next class, I can cut out a few college logos for the posters.  During achievement tests, I stole the Bible pages (don't tell anybody because I wasn't supposed to do that) and signed them during the Language Mechanics test.  I am writing this blog post while subbing for another teacher who is on a field trip.  Making use of any time you have to do small things helps them not add up to big things.
4.  Remind yourself that you won't die.  This time period happened last year and the year before that (and for me, the ten years before that), and I'm not dead yet.  Exactly zero death certificates have read, "Cause of death: too much to do and not enough time to do it in."  Keep doing it, and you will eventually get a weekend to sleep in an extra hour.
5.  Decide what is important.  This can be tough because we often convince ourselves that it is all critical.  Maybe it all is, and maybe it isn't.  For each thing, decide not only if it is important but at what level.  It is very important to me that I speak at the senior dinner, but do I need to speak about five students and give each of them a personalized gift - probably not.  This year, I have chosen to speak about two.  It is important for me to write in every student's Bible, but they don't all need to be a long and drawn out message.  The fine arts pep rally matters, but the power point may not need to be as cute and "on-theme" as I usually make it.  We do some of this to ourselves, and it isn't always necessary.

You Aren't Born With Your Passion - Part 1

If you had asked me at this time in my junior year what I wanted to do with my life, I would not have had an answer.  It wasn't that I had no interests; I had many interests.  I had too many interests and didn't know what I wanted to do with them.  When it came to choosing a career or college major, I felt like God had lost my phone number.  If you are a high school student being told to "follow your passion" but don't know what it is yet, this post and the next one are for you.

Let me back up to elementary school.  If you had asked me in third grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, it would have looked something like this:

Yep, that was my plan.  I was going to have a husband and three kids.  I was also going to pilot the space shuttle.  For those of you that say, "Yeah, everybody wanted to be an astronaut," notice that I didn't say that.  My goals were very specific; I was going to pilot the space shuttle.  I had a plan for this.  In fourth grade, I somehow got my hands on an application to the air force academy.  I had it completely filled out (you have to imagine the fourth grader handwriting to fully appreciate this).  I had people lined up to write me recommendation letters and was getting advice on how to have a congressperson provide me with an appointment.  I carried around pictures of the shuttle next to my pictures of Michael J. Fox and had photos of the moon in my notebooks.  This was going to happen.  Until . . .

Have you ever looked up the requirements for astronauts?  If you do so today, you can be 6'3" regardless of gender, but in the 80's, a female astronaut couldn't be taller than 5'8" tall.  I passed that height in fifth grade and kept growing until I reached 5'11" at the age of fifteen.  I was not going to pilot the space shuttle.  Well-meaning people who were honestly trying to be helpful told me some very stupid things.  Among them, I would be so good that NASA would change the rules for me (seriously?).

The most dangerous thing that several people told this disappointed fifth grader was that God wouldn't have let me want it so much if it wasn't His plan for me.  I had read enough of the Bible at that point to know that was garbage.  As an adult, let me just say that not matter how well meaning you are - This. Is. Heresy.  The advice to follow one's heart is ridiculous when put up next scriptures that tell us the heart is desperately wicked.  The idea that God won't let you want things He doesn't want for you flies in the face of Paul asking to have his thorn in the flesh removed.  Don't say this to children; don't say it to anyone.

So, I was a little aimless for a while.  As I mentioned earlier, I had many interests.  I loved animals, theater, science, music, television, church activities, and books.  I played the piano, the clarinet, and the handbells.  I participated in school plays and babysat and volunteered for the NC Right to Life.  There wasn't a lack of interest; there was a lack of focus.  I was interested in everything (except sports - I never could seem to get psyched about that).  I considered all kinds of careers.  If I had become everything I considered during this time, it would have looked like this:

Yes, I would have been a writing, photograph taking, elementary school teaching, pharmaceutical, veterinarian, physical therapist.  And, oh yeah, I still wanted to have a husband and three kids.  

I was a little lost, not knowing what I wanted to do or what God wanted me to do.  I remained in that wandering state until my senior year, but remember the line from JJ Tolkien's poem, "All That is Gold Does Not Glitter."  He reminds us that "not all those who wander are lost."  

More on this in my next post.