Time

I finished listening to The Screwtape Letters this week and must say this is one of my all-time favorite books. I have listened to it before, read it multiple times, and yet still feel enlightened and delighted each time I read or hear something from it. It was written in 1941, yet is fresh and applicable to our lives today. You gotta love that.

As I was listening to it this time I kept thinking, “oooh that’s so good, I‚’ll have to remember to look that up,” the silly thing is I had that thought pretty much the entire time I listened to it. This makes me want to read it again so I can mark up my book properly. I wanted to share my favorite quotes with you, but that would pretty much mean retyping the entire book, so I'm only picking one.

This passage is about time. I have been feeling so busy lately with all the running around I've been doing with my callings, preparing Whitney for school, and especially with soccer. I haven't minded it too much, but I'm definitely feeling stretched thinner than usual (if only that meant I looked thinner too) and am actively trying not to get upset about everything I HAVE to do. This passage from the book is fantastic and is a great reminder to me that my time is not my own.

Note from Amazon.com for those of you not familiar with the premise of the book.

Who among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shoulders or dogging our steps? C.S. Lewis dispels all doubts. In The Screwtape Letters, one of his bestselling works, we are made privy to the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God.

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-a-tete with the friend), that throws him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own." Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of 24 hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright."

"You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defense. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels." Pages 79-80

{Playing Operation as a family was
not my first choice of activities today.}

I feel like I have go back and forth with my issues about time. I love to have free days with no obligations, but I like to busy sometimes too. I don't like feeling like my life is full of obligations, but I do feel like I want to serve others, fulfill my church callings, and take care of my family.

One of the girls in my primary class has missed a lot of church the past few months and I've been wanting to ask her about it, but don't want to put her on the spot. She came today and I told her I'd missed her and was wondering where she'd been. She said that the baby had been sick one week, that they were too tired from a camping trip another week, and that sometimes her parents just want to take a break. I think they're having some "time" issues in their house because I've had conversations with both the parents before where they've indicated that they feel too busy and like something has got to give. It's interesting and sad that church is the thing they're letting go, rather than some of the other activities they participate in. I guess what I'm saying is, their experience has made me think. I feel like I owe the Lord "my" time and want to do the best I can with the jobs He has given me to do, and I can't help thinking how different things would be if everyone felt that way.

**How do you feel about "your" time?
Where do you draw the lines in your schedule?
How do you decide what's most important?**

Happy 30th Elisa!