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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