Putting Things Aside

One of the more difficult decisions that I ever have to make is when to put something aside that I love to do, in favor of other things that are more pressing and more important.  For the past four weeks, for example, I've had to stop posting on this blog and stop working on a novel because school has started once more, and it's more important to me to make sure the school year starts well--especially for the sake of the students.  But that's okay, because I know that it's been for a time, not for good, and that I would be back to doing this thing that I enjoy doing.

In our culture, though, it seems as if there are too many pressures not to put anything aside.  Once you start something, that's it--at least, until you burn out and quit it completely.  That's what happens to volunteers in church groups and the like.  They just keep giving and giving and giving until they can't give any more, and then the quit for good.  Is it the pressure they put on themselves that keeps them going, or pressure from outside sources?  Who can say, really?  But perhaps it's worth our while to examine those things that we're doing in our lives to see if other things can benefit if we were simply to drop something for a while.

It's okay to let something go for a while, and it's okay to let something go for good.  When you were born, there was no instruction manual saying "this person is intended for this task for this long."  When you die, God's not going to get mad at you and say, "You should have kept that up longer!"  If we're truly honest with ourselves, we can recognize just what we don't necessarily need to do and put it aside for a while so that other things can benefit.  I've gotten a lot of work done in the last four weeks, and this blog hasn't exactly suffered because of it.  Now that things are stabilized for the most part, I can get back to doing this, and even look forward to it.  If it had turned out to be a permanent change, that would have been okay, too--but I'm glad it wasn't!