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Burn-Out Vanishes When We Rediscover Purpose

By Anita Mathias

ravenna-s-apollnare-nuovo-the-three-wise-men-1When I blogged regularly, which I did for six years, I felt more alive, more alert, more attentive to my life, and what God was doing in it. In Frederick Buechner’s phrase, I listened to my life.

 

I have taken a six month blogging break, and the peril of blogging breaks (or writing breaks: ask Harper Lee or Margaret Mitchell!) is that you feel you have to write something substantial, beautiful, and meaty when you return to blogging …which seems daunting, and so you put off writing—and returning.

 

The cardinal rule for avoiding writers’ and bloggers’ block—and indeed for any endeavour—is to begin where you are, with something little and slight if need be.

 

So perhaps I should catch you up with a snippet from my life, and an insight stemming from it.

* * *

The country lane on the outskirts of Oxford, England which we live, unbelievably quiet and beautiful when we moved in over ten years ago, has changed its character as more people have moved in—“Traveller” families, as it happens. It has become noisier, less idyllic and scenic. The whole village was up in arms against “Travellers” moving in; there were public meetings and hearings; I was particularly troubled because they were moving onto a field adjacent to my large garden. But in prayer, I “heard” clearly that we were not to oppose them, so we did not; we ceased attending public meetings or lodging planning protests against them, much to our other neighbours’ mystification.

 

In early June, because of many and noisy neighbours in what had been a quiet and deserted lane, I realized that the time had come to move–from the countryside on the edge of Oxford, where I have happily lived for the last 11 years to the city, to North Oxford in particular. And we even had an offer to buy our house, phew!!

 

Why North Oxford? When I applied to study in Oxford as a student in the eighties, I felt a call, a leading to Oxford, and I have never felt a call to any other city. North Oxford is walking distance from my church, St. Andrew’s; from Oxford University where I am now on my second year of the German classes I am taking for fun; from the Ashmolean Museum; the superb Oxford Playhouse, friends, parks, the river, a good gym, yoga classes. I would be able to walk most everywhere.

 

North Oxford is, however, substantially more expensive than my country village on the outskirts of the city. It’s the most expensive area of the UK, outside of London!!

So…

* * *

Deciding to move has galvanized us. “God meant it for good.” We have owned a small business for almost ten years now, and we have started diligently and creatively expanding it to finance our move. So that’s a definite blessing that’s come from this decision.

 

Many, many, years ago, I felt a longing, to write a memoir. A call? A desire, a longing, a call–they are all intertwined. God reveals his call on our lives through the desires, gifts and experiences he has given us. But the book turned out to a bigger, longer project than I had visualized, and early rejections of the proposal at a hassled, overwhelmed time of my life broke me. Temporarily.

 

But writing this book was a mysterious call, all right, something that perched on my shoulder, and I didn’t feel free to move on to anything else until I had completed it. So I did not…move on to something else… nor complete it.

 

The tale has tragic overtones now, but God who loves good stories can make dark plot twists like Joseph-in-the-well-and-dungeon and Good Friday spiral upwards and morph into gold, into Easter Sunday

 

Anyway, when I decided to move because of my new and noisy neighbours, I swiftly realised that moving was out of the question until I had finished this book. Moving can be stressful, especially in middle age… People can lose their health, their peace and their papers…

 

So I decided to finish my book before I moved. Realising that living next door to my noisy neighbours was unsustainable in the long run galvanized me to do what I had always wanted to do for years, get some momentum on the book–which has been a great joy. How relieved, how delighted I will be when the book finally gets finished.

* * *

So here I am, writing slowly but steadily.

 

Funny thing… In June 2016, I was convinced that I was burnt-out. Our daughter Irene, our last nestling, didn’t want to go on holiday over the February or the June half-term breaks because of her mocks and A-S exams, and all I could think of was how tired and burnt out I was, and how I needed a long, active holiday, and to walk many miles a day to exorcise a cobwebby from my mind, and flood it again with oxygen and ideas.

 

But then an offer came to buy my house, and I decided to sell the house, and move, and to finish my book before I even contemplate moving. With that fresh hearing of the ancient call came a new momentum, and energy descended from the heavens.

 

I came across this quote recently, “Burnout is more often caused by purpose deficiency than vitamin deficiency.”

 

My burnout lifted, just like that.

 

I do not make bucket lists…I see God as full of kindness towards me, with open hands towards me, full of gifts, and am okay with accepting the gifts he pours out. But if I were to make a bucket list… well, finishing and publishing this book would be one of the few things in that bucket. And circumstances have now given me a sort of deadline.

* * *

Years ago, my mentor suggested that I have a writing goal. But incredibly, I didn’t then know how to set goals. You know I would hope to write two chapters, but instead wrote a teeny bit of one… and then what?

 

So this time, I started really, really ridiculously small, since I was adding a new thing–finishing a book–to a life already full with blogging, parenting, exercising, German classes, gardening, house-running, church, small group, writers’ group, etc. etc. I set the timer for 5 minutes, and decided to write 20 words minimum. The next day, I went for 40, then 60, and now I am at 2300 words a day, new or revised. I keep track of the words I’ve missed on busy days, and try to make up on the days when writing feels like flying (which are not that frequent, sadly).

 

So this is the second/third draft of the book, revising is not the most scintillating thing, but getting the book finished will be scintillating, so I try to sit down, revise 2300 words, do some make-up words, and then I’m all done for the day.

* * *

A couple of things that are helping me. I start my writing with reading, to take the revision process more joyous. (Currently reading One Man’s Meat, E. B. White’s memoir of country life which I have just decided is not for me, and Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves’ horrifying memoir of his service in the first World War).

 

I am using the Pomodoro technique, work for 25 minutes, and then take a 5 minute break to tidy and declutter, or bounce on my trampoline for 1000 steps, and then back to work. 25 minutes is a maddeningly short work session, but according to Britain’s NHS, one should take an active break from sitting every 30 minutes: “excessive sitting slows the metabolism – which affects our ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and metabolise fat – and may cause weaker muscles and bones. Essentially, the body is ‘shutting down’ while sitting and there is little muscle activity.”  

 

I am using “Freedom,” software which blocks the entire internet for the short time I am reading and writing. Divided attention destroys productivity.

 

I have discovered that a three mile walk through a park or by a river resets my tired mind and floods it with oxygen again; I don’t necessarily need a week or a weekend away, though they are wonderful.

 

I have been influenced by a book I am reading by Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, called “Spark: How Exercise will Improve the Performance of Your Brain,” about how running, lifting weights, yoga, dance and sport can spark a measurable improvement in cognitive ability… help you think more clearly, read faster and concentrate longer… essentially make you smarter. I have certainly found it to be true. I am taking yoga classes, and lifting weights, which helps me concentrate for longer, feel more alive and happier, and sleep better.

* * *

Take away? If you are listless, bored, burnt-out and aren’t getting anything much done, re-align yourself with God. Seek his marching orders for the hour in front of you, the day in front of you, the year. Each of us has been created for a purpose, and is intended to be a bright spot in the jigsaw, the mosaic that God is working on. Ask him to reveal the purpose he has for you in the coming year, or years, and then beaver away at it. Having a purpose and focussing on it has cured cancer patients, as we’ve all anecdotally heard; given the dying a new lease of life; lifted depression; helped people achieve more than they ever imagined possible.

 

What is the next purpose God has in mind for your one and precious life? Aligning yourself with the Father and working on it will fill your life with excitement and energy again.

 

Love, Anita, tortoising, and sometimes haring, away on the book she has always wanted to write.

 

Filed Under: In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management, In which I just keep Trusting the Lord, In which I try to discern the Voice and Will of God Tagged With: blogging, bucket lists, exercise, listen to your life, memoir, Oxford, Pomodoro technique, Purpose, reading, revising a book, walking, writing

Living in the “Flow” of God’s River

By Anita Mathias

waterfall_davidson_river_lg

Whoever seeks to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:39) NIV.
If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it. (Matt 10:39) New Living Translation. 

* * *

Time cannot be saved; it is a river. It flows, 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week. You cannot save it.

Use the hours well, make them shine, and when you cannot, release them without recrimination into the river of time. Already, the giver of good gifts is sending you more.

* * *

Strength cannot be saved. The more we spend it, the more we exercise, the more our strength grows. Are our bodies telling us something?

* * *

Ideas rust and atrophy when saved. But creativity blooms in the expending of it.

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes,” Annie Dillard writes in The Writing Life. 

* * *

 I reflect on these things, and squirm, since, for much of my life,  I have been exceedingly precious, careful, indeed stingy with time.

Donald Miller says in Blue Like Jazz, “I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil, but rather have us wasting time.” I tend to believe him

And so I have been too careful with time, grabbing too much for reading and writing, instead of investing in friendships and activities which would perhaps have brought happiness or health or peace or growth, the rough edges of my character smoothed away.

And I used to burn out with metronomic frequency, growing too tired to read and write.

* * *

Money is the other thing people try to save.

I was relatively relaxed about money as a single woman. When I married and decided not to work for money (except for spells of teaching creative writing at William and Mary and the Loft at Minneapolis), I tried to be careful with money because of guilt over wasting money Roy had earned. And when I was preoccupied about saving and investing–and what a dreadful use of time all that was!!– money was not particularly plentiful.

However, I gradually began to see money as a river from God, some of it flowing to me, giving me the desires of my heart, and some of it flowing through my hands to other people. God was giving me that money to use, or spend, or give away.  This river is not to be dammed up and saved, just enjoyed; held lightly, not held on to–for there is plenty more where that came from.

Sometimes I “lose” money, make unwise decisions; sometimes, I am taken advantage of, and money flows through my hands to someone else. That is okay; it is the nature of the river.

When I relinquished my concern about finances to God and turned my attention to other things, they were no longer a particular concern. There seemed to “always be enough.”

* * *

Hmm. Would this work with time too?

“Wasting time?” My father used to ask me with the expression of greatest disapproval and severity (though most of the time, I wasn’t!), and I turned the same disgust on myself if I judged myself to have wasted time.

But I now see “wasted time” as seeds. It’s inert; it seems nothing good came out of it. But put into God’s hands, who knows what beauty may emerge from those seeds?

* * *

So my time challenge is two-fold. To see time as a sparkling river coming towards me, and seek to use it well, while being totally relaxed when things don’t work out as I hoped, and time, apparently, has been wasted.

More, to learn the habit of surrendering my day and its hours to God, giving them to him, asking him to bless them, and work in them. (I haven’t yet learnt this habit!).

* * *

And—here is the challenging part: deliberately “lose” some time, give some time away for the sake of Jesus.

How can I do this?

Now, because my domestic skills are meagre, and because my husband is practical, I do not do much in the way of cooking, shopping, laundry or housekeeping. We have a cleaner who also does some housekeeping. We have gardening help. And Roy who works from home, keeps it running efficiently.

I have often spent more hours serving my church, in leading Bible Studies and speaking, than in serving my family

But for the sake of Jesus, I am planning to help my family in a tiny specific way.

It probably won’t be noticed, except by Jesus for whose sake I am doing it, but it will bring more peace to my soul, and since Jesus says that he who loses his life for His sake will find it, it will be a counter-intuitive surprising way of “finding” time!

So be it. Amen!

Filed Under: Blog Through The Bible Project, In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management, Matthew Tagged With: blog through the Bible project, losing your life to find it, Matthew, money, saving, spending, time, wasting

Changing your Life with Small, Leveraged Baby Steps

By Anita Mathias

A corner of my study. As you can see, I have too many books!!

Until four years ago, Roy and I were challenged housekeepers–with lots of clutter neither of us wanted to slow down and get rid of.
And when we moved from Williamsburg, Virginia to England, since Roy’s job was paying, I moved ahead to Oxford without doing any decluttering, and paid movers to go in, pack and ship everything to England. Which they did. Old magazines and newspapers, a garage of junk I’d meant to donate, and flip-top trashcans with trash in them. No kidding!!
Four years ago, we decided to get a weekly cleaner, and spend the 4-5 hours that the cleaner was here to put everything back in the right place, sort laundry, deal with paperwork, and declutter. Four years later, I still have about 15 boxes which came from America in 2004, which I haven’t unpacked, and loads of books to sort, organize and donate.
 * * *
Yes, after four years, we are still organizing, finding a place for things, and getting rid of things which are neither beautiful nor useful in William Morris’s phrase. And each week, we get rid of more things, and find a place for more things.  We are getting there—but with our current budget of 4-5 hours a week to tidy and put everything away, do housework, and declutter, it will take us at least another year, unless we put more time in.
And I’ve decided to make peace with that, make peace with steadily failing less each week, make peace with small gains.
           * * *
I am struggling too with getting fit. And here too, I just have to be content with failing less, or succeeding slightly. With stopping gaining weight!! I’ve lost 5 pounds this year. 5 pounds in 4 months is hardly anything—but hey, it’s sure better than gaining 5 pounds! So I will rejoice and be glad in small victories.
                * * *
I read this moving blog post recently in which the author sheds four bags of clothes, scarves, bags, jewellery etc. just from her wardrobe, before working on the rest of her possessions. She has also written about her attempts to lose her excess weight and regain fitness.
I’ve noticed a character syndrome—the same people struggle with all four or several of these weaknesses: They are overweight; they have trouble sleeping early and waking early; their houses are messy and cluttered, and they are frequently in serious debt. I struggle with the first three, and overspending has been a weakness in the past (though not debt).
It’s tragic. It’s a classic vicious circle, in which sleeping in steals your time to exercise and tidy your house, and the vim and spirit to declutter.  The mess depresses you too much to exercise, and leads to comfort eating and spending. Being overweight depresses you so that you sleep more, comfort-spend and comfort-eat. And the debt worries you so that you comfort spend, and comfort eat. (Oh, Lord have mercy, and the good news is he does SO love and have compassion on these harassed and sad people, and I’ve been one, caught in this syndrome, except for debt.)
A mentor said about my overspending (which I have dealt with at least ten years ago) that it was because of emptiness. That if my soul was more full of God, I would need to spend less. And it’s true. As I’ve dived deeper into the holy depths of God, I never look at catalogues, rarely enter stores, except when on holiday, and rarely buy things, except books.
I wonder if over-eating, and over-buying are both attempts to fill an insatiable, hungry emptiness in our souls, a nebulous wound like  Fisher-King’s undiagnosed, and so unhealed wound. And seeking healing and filling from God and his Holy Spirit is the quickest way to heal these syndromes. I do believe it.
    * * *
The other interesting thing I noticed was that people who successfully tackle one aspect of this syndrome—who can lose weight, say, or get out of debt, or get their house orderly again, or wake very early, then have the confidence and drive to tackle other areas of dysfunction.


For me, beginning to tackle clutter probably increased my mental drive and confidence to take my small business into profit. And succeeding in business, conversely, increased my confidence in housekeeping and writing!
So Mary Hunt pays off $100,000 of debt, teaches others to do the same through her Cheapskate Gazette, and with her increased gain in self-confidence, loses 100 pounds of weight.
Flylady, Marla Cilley was overweight, depressed, over-spent, and her house was chaos. She tackles the domestic chaos in baby steps, and this gives her the confidence to tackle her weight, and her finances.
Don Miller loses over 150 pounds, which gives him the confidence to write lovely books, and inspire others to change their lives.
* * *
So if you are stuck, and your dreams are not materializing, choose one change (something which takes 5-15 minutes a day) just one, which you will make today, and stick to all month. Stretching, yoga, decluttering, sleeping or waking earlier are all changes with leveraged benefits. Next month, add another small change, which again takes 5-15 minutes. (Flylady is a good site for changing your habits and life in incremental baby steps.)
And where will this 5-15 minutes come from? Many changes are leveraged. They return more than the time spent. Exercise is one (you will feel better and happier, be more energetic, and sleep less). If the main areas in which you live and work are tidy, you will be more productive, and never have to look for things. And well, sleeping early blesses the whole of the next day!!
How to find the time for the new habits? Cut back or eliminate TV if you watch it. Turn off the internet when you write. For starters. Set timers when you are on the web for pleasure.
And what is my new habit going to be? Well, I do all my housework the day the cleaner comes, about 3-5 hours. I think I am going to add in an additional 15 minutes a day of tidying and decluttering, so that I get to my goal of a sparse house in which everything is either beautiful or useful far sooner.

Filed Under: In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management

First Things First

By Anita Mathias

 C.S. Lewis  in his essay First and Second Things says, “When first things are put first, second things don’t diminish, they increase.” You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first. 

In other words, it’s the counter-intuitive paradox at the heart of the Christianity.
Want success as a blogger or writer? Put God and your duties as wife and mum first; run an orderly home; contribute to the happiness of your husband and children; take responsibility for your physical health, and you are more likely to be able to write and blog at full steam with God’s blessing.
Want friends. Again, put God, and your family first. A sense of peace, order and happiness will pervade your life, and friendships will be easier to form.
It’s the same with money or a career. Put them first, ahead of your spiritual life, health, family and friendships, and you will quite likely jeopardise all of these. But if the foundations are firm, you are free to set about making money with all your imagination and strength—and there are times in life when extra money has to be made!!
“Seek first the kingdom of god, and all these things will be added unto you.”
In other words, First Things First.

Putting second things first is a recipe for disorder in one’s finances, housekeeping, or personal and life organization.
Even in the micro-level of a day by doing our most important tasks first, relative peace and order pervades our life, and we have more mental peace for second things. It is the foundation of successful time-management.
(And as somebody, who is not naturally highly organized and disciplined, I can testify from the experience of failure that this is trueJ)

Filed Under: In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management

When to Fail Quickly and Quit

By Anita Mathias

  I read this illuminating post in the Lifehacker blog.“There’s bound to be something going on in your life right now that’s worth quitting, and the commonly recited maxim that “quitters never win and winners never quit” notwithstanding, sometimes quitting really is the best option.

In fact, if you find you have a tough time quitting, you may be falling victim to the sunk-cost fallacy: A “sunk cost” is just what it sounds like: time or money you’ve already spent. The sunk-cost fallacy is when you tell yourself that you can’t quit because of all that time or money you spent. We shouldn’t fall for this fallacy, but we do it all the time.

 “Another piece of wisdom that serial quitters get better about than those of us who are bad at quitting: Just fail quickly. Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt explains: If I were to say one of the single most important explanations for how I managed to succeed against all odds in the field of economics, it was by being a quitter. That ever since the beginning, my mantra has been “fail quickly.” If I started with a hundred ideas, I’m lucky if two or three of those ideas will ever turn into academic papers. One of my great skills as an economist has been to recognize the need to fail quickly and the willingness to jettison a project as soon as I realize it’s likely to fail.”

“Lastly, knowing when to quit can have big physiological and psychological benefits, as psychology professor Carsten Wrosch notes: People who are better able to let go when they experience unattainable goals, also experience less depressive symptoms, less negative affect over time. They also have lower Cortisol levels, and they have lower levels of systemic inflammation which is a marker of immune functioning. And they develop fewer physical health problems over time.”

 

This was a revelatory article to me. Something I am not good at is quitting. I hate to quit a book I have started reading, and have ploughed my way through many relatively uninteresting memoirs or novels, because I decided, as a teenager at school, that I would finish books I started.

Especially, as a novice writer, I could spend months over a piece of writing that was going nowhere instead of quitting and reducing it to a few paragraphs.

Peter Kramer in his book Listening to Prozac writes of an experiment tracking what depressed people did in their lunch breaks. The more depressed they were, the more likely they were to spend the whole lunch hour in the queue in the post office or bank rather than cut their losses, and return later.

When to persist, and when to quit. I guess we need the wisdom of God for this, don’t we? Is this in your plan for me, or have I persisted long enough to learn what I needed to learn?

 

And of course, there is gold in one’s weaknesses, and weakness in one’s strengths. I am sure I learned things through sticking out projects that seemed likely to fail (and did!).

 

But for now, I am deliberately deciding to jettison and fail in some projects, like developing fluency in French, to focus on one big one: my writing!

 

Filed Under: In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management Tagged With: failure

The Willingness to Fail and Joy

By Anita Mathias

http://sophiafine.com/main/2008/02/




  My forties have been an amazing decade for me, so far. We left America after 17 years and moved back to Oxford, England, and are very happy here. It feels like the right place for us to be.



It also is a decade of experimentation, and  trying several new things.
                                         * * *

In my teens and twenties, I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t be really good at. At boarding school, run by German and Irish nuns, I had a relentless campaign to be excused from choir and games because I would never be good at them. I wanted to concentrate on academics, in particular literature and debating (and writing, though I didn’t say that) and become really good. Amazingly, the nuns agreed, and I was the only girl accused from compulsory sport, an hour a day, and choir practices.



But I think my old approach of wanting to be good at what I do, or not doing it at all, has often robbed me of joy. I was telling my husband, Roy, that writing this blog, a post a day, has been and is one of the things I have enjoyed most in my whole life. 
                                    * * *


Then I stopped and thought. No, the work I have most enjoyed was the period in my twenties when I read reams and reams of poetry, and wrote poetry. I submitted a slender volume of poetry for my Masters Thesis in Creative Writing (at the Ohio State University) and was accepted for a Ph.D in Creative Writing at the State University of New York, Binghamton to develop, revise and expand it as a Ph.D thesis. (I quit my Ph.D to get married, and am not yet sure if that was a good decision–dropping the Ph.D which was SO, SO stimulating, I mean; not the getting married part).


For the first year and a half of married life, all I did was read poetry, and write poetry. I must have had 50 poems published in magazines around America in that period. 


And then, silly girl, I showed them to John Frederick Nims, the editor of Poetry Magazine, then the leading poetry magazine. “So, are they really good?” I asked. “Do you think I might have a career as a poet?” He re-read them, pursed his lips, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I would make major sacrifices for a poetic career if I were you.”


Something else was tugging at the bits: non-fiction writing. Annie Dillard says that moving from only writing poetry to writing “creative non-fiction” is like moving from playing a single instrument to working with a whole orchestra. And there is something to that. 


And so, just like that, I gave up reading and writing poetry, which was the most thrilling and fascinating thing I have ever done. 


The poet Donald Hall wrote that people abandon poetry, and then talk about it wistfully, as if poetry has abandoned them. So I did, whenever I met poets. “I used to love it too,” I’d say. “I used to write it too.” The poet Ellen Bryant Voight, who I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference at Vermont said encouraging, “Well, then, you will write it again, perhaps when the children are older.”


And so I will.
                                           * * * 




Meandering. The point of this post is to say that the idol is broken. The idol of needing to be good at something if I am to do it seriously. The idol of doing it really well or not at all.


In my forties, I have taken things up which, odds are, I may not be brilliant at, but which I immensely enjoy.


My second and third languages at school were Sanskrit and Hindi, and so I have never learned French, but I adore the sound of it. So two years ago, I got a tutor who comes over weekly and works with me on my French, even though I can only dedicate 2-4 hours a week to it. He is a Parisian actor and playwright, living and  working in Oxford, who directs his own plays, acts in other people, and adapts books for the stage. 


We talk for an hour a week, on everything— films, plays, books, art and Europe, and it is amazing how much fun one can have–rowing far out of shore, talking in a foreign language about things which interest you, while knowing that you are probably making several erreurs per paragraph.


Zoe, 16, and I used to do French conversation together with a native speaker, but now she is seriously working for her G.C.S.E.s and I don’t want to spend more than 3-4 hours on French (an hour of conversation; a hour of grammar and reading a book and Le Monde; two hours on a French movie. So she has Jean-Patrick for her own hour. “Do you think I am now better than you, Mum?” she asked in delight. “Are you going to let me become better than you?” Yeah, I think I am, though it will be hard. The idol of competitiveness is being smashed, along with the idol of being really good at what I take up seriously. It’s freeing to enjoy something for its own sake, without it leading to anything that I can see. 
                                                                              * *  *


Another late-forties project of mine is to become a bit fitter. (To become really fit will be a project for my fifties.) Something else I have taken up recently is tennis, with a coach. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that I will ever be good at it, as I can’t run fast enough. But that doesn’t prevent it being a lot of fun. Roy watches me in amazement and says, “Wow! You’re really enjoying it. You really enjoy exercise” And so I am. 


The girl who hated anything physical now has a gym membership!! Again, I really enjoy yoga, zumba and body combat, while being, quite probably, and– quite probably, quite visibly–the
worst in the room.   
                                                                               * * *


I don’t think I would have been able to blog in my thirties. I don’t think I would have been able to release work which wasn’t my best. Now, I do. In fact, I don’t even have a blog stack, but press publish as each post is written. Holding on to them, revising them, would be a sure way for perfectionism–and its evil twin, writers’ block–to show their faces again. 

Filed Under: In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management, In which I pursue happiness and the bluebird of joy

We Must Prune Even the Good for Increased Fruitfulness

By Anita Mathias

 

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Every branch that does bear fruit, the gardener prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15:2. Seems unfair, doesn’t it?

In a contemporary interpretation of the Joseph story in Sun, Stand Still,  Stephen Furtick refers to the pit of into which Joseph was tossed on his journey from being a shepherd boy in Israel to being Viceroy of Egypt as being a necessary removal of the unnecessary from the hard disk of Joseph’s life to make room for an upgrade.

Yes. That is what pruning is. If the good—branches, twigs, leaves– interferes with the best, out it goes.

For  the good is always the enemy of the best.

                                                                                                                          * * *

I have struggled with this all my life, being the sort of woman who is interested in everything, and wants to do everything, remaining in denial that the many was the enemy of focus.
However, more and more I am realizing my life and my time are not my own. That my call to write is synonymous with my call to follow Christ. For He calls me to write. So I must cut what stands in the way of writing.

At New Wine 2008, the wonderful Heidi Baker launched into a hypnotic, half-sung, half-chanted riff at the end of her talk, where she prayed gifts on her audience. “Has God called you to write? she asked. “Then say, I will do whatever it takes for me to become a writer.”

 Can I say it even now? It makes me feel afraid, and stressed.

* * *

I had entered Mother Teresa’s convent and wanted to become a nun when I was 17. I realized it was a mistake after a year, but thought I would look foolish if I left, so dragged on, growing increasingly ill, physically.

While there, I read a book called “Our Father.” A man boards a train going in the wrong direction. He realizes it, but having told everyone that he was disembarking at the last stop, he felt embarrassed to admit that he had boarded the wrong train, and jump off. So he continues travelling in the wrong direction–getting more and more annoyed with the friends who invited him to dinner, exposing him to this hassle.

I left.

If you realise that you are going in the wrong direction, have agreed to something you shouldn’t have, are doing something that is not your call, jump off as fast as you can.

In this phase of pruning, I am jumping off more and more trains I should never have boarded, my French language lessons, gym memberships, prayer ministry, many relationships and friendships, some social events, so that I can more fully focus on the one thing God has called me to do: to write!

Filed Under: Blog Through The Bible Project, In which I explore Productivity and Time Management and Life Management Tagged With: blog through the Bible project, focus, Fruitfulness, Producivity, TIme Management

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Anita Mathias: About Me

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My Books

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

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Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

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The Story of Dirk Willems

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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
  • Trust: A Message of Christmas
  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner
  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

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What I’m Reading

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barak Obama

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H Is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald

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Tiny Habits
B. J. Fogg

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The Regeneration Trilogy
Pat Barker

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anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things. * * *
Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.
And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.
He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.
For he created all things, and in him all things hold together
Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth
Drawing astronomers to him.
And drawing him to the attention of an angry King
As angelic song drew shepherds to him.
An Emperor, a King, scholars, shepherds, angels, animals, stars, an unwed mother
All things in heaven and earth connected
By a homeless baby
The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.
The One who makes connections. * * *
And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.
To me, today, it says, “Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.” The baby lay gentle in the barn
And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents. “Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says, “I will make a way. I will show it to you.” Happy Christmas everyone.  https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/24/trust-a-message-of-christmas/ #christmas #gemalderieberlin #trust #godwillmakeaway
Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
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