Bits for Sunday, January 10, 2010

I’m not sure what life was like for you in the first full week of 2010, but in my world, insanely busy seems to best cover it. I actually ran out of lines in my new day planner to list all the required tasks, so I had to resort to adding hot pink sticky notes out to the side. At first I declared that my second-rate day planner was simply displaying another reason why it’s second-rate, but I suppose it could be that I’m too busy.

Amid the scrapping, the cooking, the shoveling (which was a last minute add-on to the schedule), the writing, the laundry, the shopping (grocery, not pleasure), and the seemingly daily calling to the Hickory Dickory Dock Mouse Removal Service for yet another house call, I did have the chance to sneak away for a quick retreat with some ladies from my church.

We loaded up some vans Friday night and headed to Quaker Haven Camp for not quite a full 24 hours of freedom from responsibility. We laughed, we ate, we talked, we ate, we slept (just kidding), we ate, and we learned from a gifted speaker who had good nuggets of life’s wisdom to share.

The theme of the retreat was running ragged…something I know very well. (Shoot, I was the third person to leave the group to head to bed, all because I was too tired to stay awake after a week of wee hour bedtimes.) I managed to mark off all but one of my to-do list chores this week, and I added more than a few extras to accommodate weather and others. Yes, running ragged is something I know very well.

Our speaker didn’t spend a lot of time telling us how not to run ragged, but she did spend time telling us how to survive a life that might be prone to natural raggedness.

I wrote down several of her points and committed others to memory, but one thing she encouraged us to try was this: stop spending a dollar’s worth of energy on a ten cent issue. I’ve nearly bankrupted myself on some ten cent issues over the course of time, so this was a great point for me to hear.

I’ve heard many of my married and parenting friends say they “choose their battles” with their spouse or their children. Sometimes you have to when another person is involved. (Or so I hear.) But regardless of marital or parenting status, all of us have to face issues. We judge the importance of our issues on what other people might say. We minimize things because someone else is facing something much bigger, and we feel bad about mentioning our little problems. And on the other hand, we might just magnify a tiny thing in order to push down someone else’s issue that we find petty.

That shouldn’t be the measuring stick.

I think we should look at our situations, even if they’re internal, and decide if they’re worth a dollar of energy…or just ten cents. We need to decide their worth. Not what others would say.
And if they’re worth a dollar…then get in there and spend some energy. Fight. Clean up. Work hard. And if they’re only worth ten cents…then pay the dime and move on.

Probably most of us could claim an honorary graduate degree in running ragged. But we’ve paid a lot more for it than we should have. It’s time to stop spending…and start saving for what matters most.