Category Archives: finding purpose in life

Take a Break

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It’s been too long. I’ve been taking a break. My excuse: It’s been the Christmas – New Years break. I didn’t actually have any time off in the office, other than December 25th and January 1st. But it’s time to take a break anyway.

We all need a change of pace occasionally, time to get off the squirrel cage, time to slow down, time to recharge the battery.

With New Years Day comes talk of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t make those anymore. They all get broken. But my wife and I have agreed to set aside time during an upcoming vacation to discuss where we are and where we want to go – a time to reflect.

January should be a time for life planning. We get so caught up in the urgent that we neglect the important. We forget what plans we had already made. It’s time to reflect and start over.

Where are we now? Where do we want to be? What direction do we seem to be heading? Is that what we want? Where do we think God wants us to be? Are we working to achieving that goal? Is it time to “repurpose” our life?

This isn’t original with me, but I highly recommend the following:

  1. Set aside a time for this purpose.
  2. Get away from your normal setting.
  3. Do this with your life partner, if you have one. What a great time for a brainstorming date.
  4. Prepare yourself by reading or rereading books that have inspired you in the past. Find new ones that will help you plan for the future.
  5. Write down your decisions – achievable goals, plans, a path to get there.
  6. Put your written plan someplace you will see it everyday.
  7. Review it regularly and make changes as appropriate.

Now get out there and take control of where you are and where you’re going. And let us know about what you’ve changed, what successes you’ve had.

Finding Your Plexus

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When you look at the empty hammock above, you see that I’m not in my plexus…not yet. I’m working at it. And we all have to work at it. The natural tendency is for our lives to flow downstream, along the path of least resistance. And if we strive to arrange our lives into a plexus of our making, we will get resistance.

My mother died a year ago, and what I write next, I do so with all respect. But my mother knew how to pull my strings. She could make me feel guilty to manipulate my behavior. Every time I visited her she had a list of things for me to do. And if I didn’t do them, I felt guilty. I don’t know why she could do that to me better than anyone else, but she could. Maybe it had something to do with training me from an infant.

Anyway, after I read BOUNDARIES, I offered her my copy for her to read. I wondered how she would take it. Would she recognize her ability to control others? Would she be offended? I returned the next week to visit. I couldn’t wait to hear her thoughts on the book. She slid it across the table to me, the page marker indicating she had read very little. The only thing she said was, “Who ever gave you that book in the first place?”

She recognized that I was trying to establish boundaries. That did not suit her purposes. I never did establish boundaries with my mother. And most of the people in your life who wish to invade your boundaries will not be happy when you try to establish them, either. So the path of least resistance is to become the tortured on the rack.

It takes work to find your plexus. It takes work to make it happen. It may take a lifetime. We’ll discuss in future posts how we go about determining what our plexus should be. In the meantime, what are your dreams for your life? How do they align with your talents, with the gifts that God has given you? How would you use that dream life, your plexus, to serve God and His children?