FREEWRITE: REPENT, REST, and RESTORE in MARCH

Photo by Bich Tran from Pexels

I added the REPENT part of the title of this Freewrite. Mainly because it is Ash Wednesday tomorrow, and I am reading and meditating on the Scriptures in A Lenten Journey with Bill O'Byrne. It just seemed like the right group to join for this Lent. Pray as You Go, Lectio365, and Ignatian Spirituality Center in Glasgow all have Lenten devotionals. This one was calling my name. I meet with a group every Saturday morning for two hours to reflect on everything. Bill is such a nice person that I thought it would be lovely.

I had a weekly Examen with Andy from OMS and 16 other people (mostly new candidates to the order), and one of the questions we were to ask God was:

What are you inviting me to in the future? 

I felt God saying REST and RECOVERY from FULL FEBRUARY. 

It really was a very FULL February with two things hanging over my head (well really three):

1) Reservations for our trip to another part of the world for a huge prayer gathering.

2) Speaking on Breath Prayer at my church for two services - one short message of 3-5 minutes is always more difficult for me to formulate than an hour-long talk. How do you convey something really important in about 200 words? 

3) COVID students - making sure they got all their makeup work in by last Friday (and correcting all the Extra Credit that was also due last Friday). So much more paperwork and time at the computer because of COVID. COVID aside, it has increasingly been more and more hours of work sitting at the computer. So it is time for me to leave since my goal was to get paid to exercise. The extra time at the computer is canceling out what benefit I receive from exercising. I can exercise on my own or with my own class here and spend no time at the computer! 

REST and RESTORE - I plan a Day of Prayer on the anniversary of my surrendering everything to him on March 17, 1979. I cannot believe that was 43 years ago! I plan an overnighter somewhere. 

I also have so many fewer "duties" other than 

1) OMS Cohort leading - fun for me

2) Breath Prayer Blog Post - fun for me

3) Submitting my grades on March 10. Then I am free until May 2nd other than putting up the Spring term Canvas course and some university classes (more time at the computer) required for my job by April 1. - not fun for me

4) Preparing to lead to classes on the Enneagram Instinctual Variants for two cohorts of Spiritual Directors - fun for me

5) Finishing up my Supervision course for Spiritual Directors (March 22 is the last day) - life-giving! I love to learn.

6) Breaking up my Exercises for Everyone book into sections for a new directee who wants to go through the Spiritual Exercise - so fun for me. 

Perfect. I have 36 seconds to go on my 15 minutes Freewrite. 

TTFN!