I don’t have time

If you’ve ever been in grad school and/or live a pretty crazy busy life, you probably completely understand the above statement. It is the main reason that I haven’t posted in a while and frankly, I’m supposed to be working on lesson plans right now not creating a blog post, but I’d rather create a blog post.

Today has just been stressful. One of those times when I had to have everything silent for a few minutes and just take deep breaths and tell myself that yes, I will get through this one minute at a time. It’s actually rather humorous when I think about it. The whole inspiration for this post comes from what just happened:

I have spent the last few days trying to work on a presentation for tomorrow’s class. It’s basically an 8-10 page analysis of one of my favorite of Molière’s plays Les Précieuses ridicules. For whatever reason, I have struggled to get it done when I had intended to finish it by yesterday. I’m a planner, so I try to have things done by a certain time ahead of when it’s due in order to focus on other things. That didn’t happen. So, after working on it today, I just finally finished it and printed it out for tomorrow. A sigh of relief came out as I watched the pages coming out of the printer and was reaching to grab more paper to refill it. I usually like to just celebrate getting done with a big  paper by maybe going to bed early or browsing favorite websites such as Pinterest.

Then, it hit me as these thoughts rushed into my mind:

*Right, I need to double check what I’m teaching for tomorrow’s class. Then, I need to check and print that review for their exam and read over the draft of their exam. Then, there’s that Arabic homework due Friday that I’ve not even touched. The students who were working on it today before class said that it is a headache. Oh, and there’s that thesis stuff hanging out there. I’m supposed to have research gathered by…*

I just sat there and shook my head. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. 

Time.

It’s such a valuable thing. I have the tendency (though I’m trying to work on it) of becoming quite annoyed when people waste my time because especially right now it seems to slip through my fingers so fast. It just simply feels like there are not enough hours in one day to get things done sometimes.

As I was sitting there debating between whether this was truly a hilarious state of affairs or to deem it a worthy time to have a good cry, something came to my mind. There was a sermon I listened to recently. I couldn’t remember who preached it though I think it may have been my pastor, but the preacher was talking about time. I remember him turning to Revelation and talking about the end of time and then back to Colossians and talking about what it meant to “redeem the time”. He was making the point that time would continue for as long as God wanted it to continue. However, we need not lose hope because God is in control of time even when we feel like time is out of control and don’t understand why it keeps on going.

A peace came across me. That feeling of “I will get through this even if I don’t have any idea how I’ll have time or how it will get done.” So, as I’m pulling out my plans for tomorrow and figuring out how to get things done, I can continue in this hope that God is in control. Even when time seems against me and everything seems to be getting increasingly stressful, this is not the end and this is not all there is. One day there will be an end of time and we will no longer be constrained by minutes and seconds. For, such things will no longer be counted or even regarded as important. There will be bliss. Eternity!

And, yes, there will also cease to be that great user of time: grad school!