Rethinking My Time

Is it time to change?

Changing schedules is usually a challenge. It looks like changing this time will be very easy. My middle son will no longer have his work at the church, so that schedule will change. I talked with the office manager at my work and she is very comfortable with the changes I'm requesting. My cleaning job works around me, so this change thing seems to be very comfortable.

My other scheduled times are schooling and church work. Because I am training other people to do the things I do at church, with this new schedule, I would be more available in the late afternoons or evenings around their schedules. Rach can do Math at Gramma's and another subject or two. We can do work in an evening if needed, as well as a Saturday. I will still work every other Saturday.

After my dream a week ago, I have really been pondering "change". It seems that I have some control over the changes in my life - some I do not. When requesting changes in times past, there have been doors completely closed and yet other doors swung open at my tiniest request. It's almost jolting at the opposite reactions! I realize that I wanted the "door closed" opportunity so much that I would continue to press on the continually closed door. Now how silly is that? (insert smiley face here for a chuckle!)

Romans 12:2 (LLT) says "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."

I am wondering if I was trying to "make a place for myself" in the place where the doors were closed? I might have been trying to do so much that those at that place would see that they needed me and open the door for me to come in. I think my motives were pure. I began to realize that there would not be a door opened for me. It wasn't that the door was not opened for others. It was that the door was not opened for me. Why have I not seen this? I had great desire to be in the room on the other side of the door and I really thought I had quality to add in that room. Maybe because I wasn't really invited to that other room, what quality I was offering was really only my passion to be in the other room. Sometimes my mind can play funny tricks on me. My confidence has been fairly shaken in thinking I can hear the will of God. I'm trying hard to go back to the beginning and do what Jeremiah 33:3 says.

"Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know." (NASB)

"Ask me and I will tell you some remarkable secrets about what is going to happen here." (NLT)

"'Call to me and I will answer you. I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.' (The Message)

I am coming to believe that there are other doors out there that God will open. Because I don't have a clue about which ones, I don't feel the pressure of trying so hard to open them. I think my heart is realizing that I am changing. Must be my age?!

Those who have so impacted my life and the doors in my life really don't have that impact anymore. I think I am letting go of something that really barely had hold of me in the first place. Goodness . . . what a revelation! I don't know that I'd have ever really figured that out on my own. People have told me that my expectations were higher than those behind those doors. I think I just thought people weren't giving those behind those doors any credit or understanding. My longing to be on the other side of those closed doors really blinded reality. I don't know that I'm even all that sad as I sit here and type. It will probably hit me sometime. That's ok though, God has my heart. He is my foundation!

Yep . . . time to change.