Preparing for the Season

After a one season hiatus, I return to coaching basketball in three short weeks. While I wasn't sure I'd ever be back, and I appreciated many aspects of a toned-down winter schedule, I know that for me there is no way to do this job half speed. If I'm in, I'm in all the way, heart and mind, emotions and time, committed to the process. In short, I am signing on and accepting responsibility for another busy season in life.

Some people are able to live a somewhat consistent, predictable, stable way of life. I am not. I have seasons, and I love seasons. I can go hard teaching for nine months, with all the work and energy that entails, knowing I have a three month season of relative relaxation. And just as summer turns to fall, and the earlier sunsets indicate a renewed sense of commitment; so also when the snow flies, I feel a call to add a few more hours, a few more smiles, and a few more stressors to each work day, on top of the English teaching reading and paper load. 'Tis the season, after all.

It is easy to get stressed in the busy seasons. So much has to go right to fit everything in. Every unplanned obstacle becomes an emergency. Rather than a nuisance, illnesses become crippling. Just as any problem in heavy traffic turns into a traffic jam, every inconvenience in a busy season ratchets up the rage and affects every other activity on my personal road.

This busy, though, I am choosing. As I indicated above, I am responsible for it. I am claiming it and the way it affects every priority in my life.

A common piece of advice, and a wise one I'm sure, is to not let your busyness affect your priorities. For me, that advice essentially means don't be too tired to be Dad. Don't be too invested that you neglect to invest in your wife. Don't be too busy to pray. And that's all good advice.

But this season I think I'm going another way. I'm flipping the advice. Rather than not let my busyness affect my priorities, I want to make sure my priorities affect my busyness.

Instead of worrying about my basketball schedule getting in the way, I will be more conscious of carrying my core priorities around with me. I will remember that I am a father who treasures his daughters, and that will fuel a respect for the time of my players and their families. My intense love for my wife, and my desire to make her proud of the work I do, will walk alongside me and remind me that every decision, every word, every effort I make matters to far more people than me. Instead of worrying about basketball decreasing my worship to the God I trust and humbly rely on, I will make what I do in my busy hours a worthy offering of praise.

At an English teaching conference I went to recently, one speaker sought to clarify the definition of non-fiction, with I think is sorely needed. For too long, students have been told that fiction is fake and non-fiction is real. It can be trusted. Not so, said the speaker. What we need to communicate to readers of all ages is that the definition of non-fiction is a text that "enters your world and purports to tell us something about it." Rather than being less work, non-fiction is more. It requires a response. With non-fiction, the reader has a responsibility to understand the text, its inherent biases and preconceived positions, and see if it fits into or is strong enough to change his or her worldview.

The sacred texts of our lives, whether they be actual texts (like my precious Bible) or the volumes containing the priorities that stand as the pillars marking all we hold dear, must be read with as much attention, with as much of a demand for a response. But rather than seeing if we have room for what our sacred texts purport to tell us about our world, we must check our world and all the activities therein, and see if our actions fit those sacred texts.

Busy can be an obstacle, or it can be an opportunity to extend all that we love and believe in to further corners of the world. But only for a season. My priorities in this busy season, and I hope in many busy seasons to come, will not be something I save energy for. I will not carve out time to remember them. They will not get my leftovers. Rather, in the heat of the schedule, in all the deeds I enjoy and in the ones that are mere necessities, I will carry them with me everywhere I go.