I’m back. After Christmas week, I took nine days off. Dec. 29 until Jan. 6. After ten years teaching, two weeks of vacation per year forces me to be absolute about it.
Once I’m gone, I’m gone. No email. No blogs. No phone calls. No work. Period. If I forget to post a goodbye blog, too bad. (I forgot to do that.)
For me, vacation time is a kind of retreat. If work is a battle, then vacation is when I pull back. I go where its safe and rest for awhile. Regain strength. Rest. Spend time with the people I’m fighting for–meaning my family. They need the essentials after all, food, shelter, clothes. My wife and I agreed that I would earn the bread for this season of our lives. And I intend to honor that.
Of course, I also review the battle plan a little bit. I can’t help it. I like to think about work, though I do my best not to talk about work or blogging or writing in general while I’m on vacation.
But I do think about it at night in bed when everyone else is asleep.
And here are the kind of plans I make. SMART goals. It’s not a matter of resolutions. Archaic words like “resolve” give my goals a false sense of institutional importance. And there is nothing institutional about my goals.
I pray about my plans too. I try my best to remember Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, ut it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” As much as possible, I try to discern the Lord’s purpose as I make plans.
For much of my life, this meant that I approached opportunities as if they were blessed by God. Without thinking about it much, I gradually came to see open doors as places I should explore.
Lately, I’ve faced too many open doors. I have to choose which ones to explore. And I think God expects me to choose. Let me be blunt, sometimes I doubt God cares much about my career goals and my life ambitions.
I’m finishing up a manuscript in the next few weeks. I think God cares about that–but he cares because I care. More than what I do or what I produce, I think God is interested in the way I go about it. Does the process honor him? Or not.
Which means, the process of thinking through goals could be more important than the goals themselves.
And if anyone is still reading here, I’m curious. What are some of your goals for the next few months?
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Just taking it a week at a time. No big plans, because soon the book will be on the way and I have no idea what that might mean (or not). Sometimes a holding pattern is exactly the plan we need, yes?
Reading (of course, when is that not a goal?), Traveling with the Wife, looking for a new place to move to…nothing major, really.
I agree–sometimes I think we put too much stress on ourselves to pinpoint the right thing that God wants us to do rather than act in the right way. Not that choosing is a bad focus.
I don’t have a goal as much as a prayer–make me insignificant. (I blogged about it because this is the hardest prayer for me to pray right now.)
Finish reading Henry Cloud’s “Integrity.”
Submit an exciting speaking proposal.
Reward myself “big time” for achieving my goals!
My goal is to finish my Manuscript by June. That’s pretty slow, really, but with my other more important priorities, its the only way to go.
I like it when you said “More than what I do or what I produce, I think God is interested in the way I go about it.” I’ve thought about that in the past as “God is more interested in the painting than the frame” trying, I think, to mean the same thing you said.
Thanks for helping me remember this!
I agree with you, Mark. God is interested more on the inward man than the outward things.
I aim to get a bit more fit this year. My family needs me to be able to keep up.
I also want to play more with my kids, to listen more, and to spend more time tucking them in at night.
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