Monday, November 03, 2003
Achoo!
Blows the dust off this blog. Achoo!!
Considering that my last post here was in August, I guess it's pretty clear how things have been NOT going in my devotional life. True, this blog was never supposed to be my devotional, but it is a pretty accurate representation of it. So yeah, some stuff has happened since August, but for the most part I've been going through my same old struggles: not doing daily devotions, not praying enough, not being accountable to friends, etc.
I've been extremely busy since school started, or, to be more accurate, I became even more busy once school started. If you've read my other blogs, you know that I've really been struggling to manage my time around school and my part time jobs. Objectively I know that I'm not nearly as busy as a lot of other people--engineers, architects, etc.--who cope just fine and probably don't whine about their busyness as much as me, but, that doesn't change the fact that I feel stressed out about everything. So yeah, problem number one, I suppose, is that I'm still not making time for God.
One change is that I've joined a small group. So far it's been pretty good. We seem to be able, as a group, to push past the pat, Christian answers and to ask questions, which is something that doesn't really happen as much when you're trying to work through things on your own. The only thing is that I don't do the spiritual exercises/prestudy as I should, which I think probably limits my growth from this experience.
At the beginning of the year I made the decision that I wasn't going to commit to regularly attending JOY fellowship if I joined a small group, because of time constraints. When I made the decision I thought it was the right one, but the fact that I feel guilty for choosing not to go to fellowship some nights makes me wonder...
Ah! Another thing I've managed to keep working on is expressing my emotions honestly to people. I almost always end up feeling silly after having done so, however. Usually after I send the email or whatever, I calm down and then feel embarrassed at how illogical/incoherent I was while expressing my emotions. I guess it's just a matter of balance. Right now I'm working on expressing the emotions, so I tend to right at the height of my emotionalness. Hopefully once I've got the hang of it I'll be able to express my emotions without sacrificing my logical/rational/coherent way of expressing myself. ^^;; I've got to admit, I often feel tempted to go back to keeping all my deeper thoughts and feelings to myself--it saves a lot of embarassment later on.
Eh...There's so much more I could write about, but I've got to finish my homework/class preparation, and then get onto my small group prep! Here's hoping my next entry will be sooner than three months from now!
Blows the dust off this blog. Achoo!!
Considering that my last post here was in August, I guess it's pretty clear how things have been NOT going in my devotional life. True, this blog was never supposed to be my devotional, but it is a pretty accurate representation of it. So yeah, some stuff has happened since August, but for the most part I've been going through my same old struggles: not doing daily devotions, not praying enough, not being accountable to friends, etc.
I've been extremely busy since school started, or, to be more accurate, I became even more busy once school started. If you've read my other blogs, you know that I've really been struggling to manage my time around school and my part time jobs. Objectively I know that I'm not nearly as busy as a lot of other people--engineers, architects, etc.--who cope just fine and probably don't whine about their busyness as much as me, but, that doesn't change the fact that I feel stressed out about everything. So yeah, problem number one, I suppose, is that I'm still not making time for God.
One change is that I've joined a small group. So far it's been pretty good. We seem to be able, as a group, to push past the pat, Christian answers and to ask questions, which is something that doesn't really happen as much when you're trying to work through things on your own. The only thing is that I don't do the spiritual exercises/prestudy as I should, which I think probably limits my growth from this experience.
At the beginning of the year I made the decision that I wasn't going to commit to regularly attending JOY fellowship if I joined a small group, because of time constraints. When I made the decision I thought it was the right one, but the fact that I feel guilty for choosing not to go to fellowship some nights makes me wonder...
Ah! Another thing I've managed to keep working on is expressing my emotions honestly to people. I almost always end up feeling silly after having done so, however. Usually after I send the email or whatever, I calm down and then feel embarrassed at how illogical/incoherent I was while expressing my emotions. I guess it's just a matter of balance. Right now I'm working on expressing the emotions, so I tend to right at the height of my emotionalness. Hopefully once I've got the hang of it I'll be able to express my emotions without sacrificing my logical/rational/coherent way of expressing myself. ^^;; I've got to admit, I often feel tempted to go back to keeping all my deeper thoughts and feelings to myself--it saves a lot of embarassment later on.
Eh...There's so much more I could write about, but I've got to finish my homework/class preparation, and then get onto my small group prep! Here's hoping my next entry will be sooner than three months from now!
