So much of our life is controlled by our watch and our calendar. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or bad thing, but I find that people are often watching time and the calendar in anticipation of the next thing. Whether it’s lunch hour, or an important meeting, or a date, or time for our favorite show, or summer vacation, or our next paycheck, or our birthday, or christmas. There is always something keeping us looking down at our watch or at our calendar to keep tabs on how much or little time there is left until he ‘next’ thing. I see the importance of good order and schedules to keep objectives on track and to set certain goals, but we lose so much of the little moments when always anticipating what is coming next.
I’m never really one to wear a watch anyways, but especially at home, I find myself always checking my phone, whether to see if I received any messages or to check what time it is. However, the last two months, I haven’t even had a phone or any pocket sized device that told me what time it was. My iPhone was stolen in Bolivia, I gave up my WR phone with the logistics position, and my iPod broke in Malaysia. So with no way to access the time, what better season of my life would I have to give up that complete dependence on a schedule and keeping tabs on what’s next and when’s next. So for the months of Malaysia and Thailand, I chose to give up time.
Of course there are a lot of times on the race where being prompt and sticking to a schedule is important, but most of the time you have at least six other people you are living with who know the schedule and are keeping tabs of time. So you can just follow them to the next thing, and though it may be annoying, you can ask them what time it is if you really must know. However it is still giving up your independence and your need for control of schedule in your life.
The most important thing I learned from this discipline is the importance of working for the Lord and not for man. When you are working with the mindset of being done at lunch hour or at 3 pm, you are simply working because you have to and you are constantly checking the time to see when those 3 hours or 45 minutes are over. So much energy and mindset is focused on being done or the ‘next’ thing instead of giving everything you have until your time is finished. It shouldn’t matter how soon you will be finished, your quality of work should be the same with 15 minutes left as when you first started. So giving up time was my way of maintaining that mindset of work, not about it being a certain amount of time I am working, but working at everything with joy from the Lord, because that is why He has called me here. Without a watch on my wrist or a phone to pull out and check the time, I would have no idea how much more time I had to work but would just push myself until my contact or teammate told me it was time to load up in the van and move on. Of course I wish I could say it was perfect and gave me so much joy in all of my work and I never had to ask for the time, but I can’t. But overall, giving up that other piece of control, knowing the time and knowing the schedule, just brought me that much closer to a dependence on God for the strength and joy needed to push through hard or inconvenient times.
