2010 ended wearily. The best way to describe myself when finals were all said and done was "weary."
There are reasons that I can point to: the biggest being that I haven't had more than three weeks off since the January break my senior year in college. I graduated from my undergrad and then two weeks later was studying Greek in St. Louis. I took a January class that year, and I took Hebrew classes this summer. On top of that - this semester I had lots of small little assignments due each week. I would much rather have on BIG assignment every three weeks, but this semester I was the most consistently busy. The honeymoon of the first year was over and this semester was hard. My lack of rest caught up to me. I was weary.
Still, it wasn't too hard. My finals were difficult, but not unreasonable. They were actually spaced out in such a way that I didn't have to juggle trying to do too many things at once. I got to focus on one final and then move on to the next. I said I had lots of weekly assignments during the semester, but really none of them were too difficult either - they were "little" assignments. If I have to be honest I was weary simply because I dislike being busy. The busyiness wasn't my problem - it was how I was responding to the busyiness that got me down. A busy life is not the life I desire and being faced with that fact I simply acted as though I had a different life.
I spent a decent amount of my Fall semester feeling sorry for myself. I withdrew from my roommates and friends - which you'd think might mean that I could spend more time on my schoolwork, but I ultimately ended up wasting most of that time on the internet. It was my least social semester. It was my least self-reflective semester. I took less pictures. I evaluated my studies and life less. I
I'll be busy for the rest of my life, but hopefully God is teaching me something about what it means to grow up and respond positively to being busy. I am thankful that I can see, looking back on it, how I wasted the opportunities I had and how when I reject the life that I have then I am actually rejecting a good gift from God. Sheer willpower (or any number of New Years Resolutions) will not be enough to help me change, but I believe that God has the power to not merely inspire me, but to truly transform me. The better you know me the more likely are to doubt its possible (I am the first to doubt it!) There are areas of my life that I just simply don't believe that the Gospel applies to. Yet, the story that we see throughout the entire Bible is that God brings life into where there was death! The way things were do not have to be the way things will be. Stay tuned all year long to find out!