Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
So here we are, two weeks into the new year. How many of your resolutions have you already given up on? Or, did you even bother to make any at all?
In my family, rather than resolutions, we pick a word to attempt to live by/embrace for the year. Mine for 2015 is “tranquility,” something I never seem to embrace, no matter how often I purport to crave it. That inability to say no and hence to overcommit to work and social engagements leaves me feeling stressed and cranky. While I’m far from perfect, it is also, I think, the No. 1 in which the devil attempts to come into my life. If you’re so overbooked that you fall into bed exhausted many nights, you don’t have a lot of time to cultivate and nurture a one-on-one relationship with the Lord. That’s the way the devil and his agents, the unclean spirits, like it. It gives them more space to work on you. In today’s Gospel reading from Mark 1, the people are amazed the ease with which Jesus orders the unclean spirit out of the man; he wants to do the same for us.
So how am I doing on tranquility so far? It’s been a mixed bag. I’ve turned down a couple of requests for speaker proposals, but I was up past eleven one night working on a magazine article. I didn’t scream or cry when our printer breathed its last or when two techs took six hours to figure out why some updates weren’t loading, but I was a little jaded and short with someone who was bubbling over with enthusiasm for something that’s become a bit rote to me.
Tranquility. With the Lord’s help, I’m inching closer to pulling out by the roots some of those weeds the devil and his friends planted to keep me too busy to love Him as I should.
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