Walking The Walk

I retired from my professional career last week.  For 38 years I've worked in jobs that have required me to work long hours, manage multiple projects with multiple groups, and manage employees and their workloads.  They've all been high stress jobs with monstrous workloads--including the one I just retired from.  I'd been in that job for 21 years.  I'd say I average about 50 hours a week.  I worked evenings when necessary.  I worked weekends when we were behind (which was often).  I'm a morning person, so I've always been the first one there.  I've usually worked several hours before the first person arrived in the office.  Taking vacation wasn't easy, and I usually had to take it a day or two at a time because taking longer periods of time off put my whole team behind. On top of that, my wife and I have raised a family--I've got a grown daughter who is out on her own, and a my youngest is a high school senior.  I've served on the school...

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. " ~Mark 1:35 About a year ago I wrote a piece called Clear Your Head!   I wrote about how I took a day off, and packed a cooler with water, took my Bible and my journal and went out to a nice, quiet, wooded spot in a local park. My head was full, and I needed to sort a few things out.  And I needed a lot of help from the Lord.  My life was just too busy, and too noisy, and too distracted, and too chaotic to hear what the the Spirit was saying to me, and I knew I needed to find that quiet spot and stay there until I had worked through the problems I was having.  I needed guidance.  So I went, and I prayed, and I pondered, and I listened, and spent most of the day sitting at a picnic table doing that. No phone.  No iPad.  Not a single thing to distract me.  And that one day made a huge difference.  Much more than...