I seem to do my best work when I am synced up; when I have a schedule and a plan.  I hate it when I get out of sync.  When that happens, I don’t get the things accomplished that I need to.  It’s definitely harder to stay motivated.  Not that I am inflexible, but as I said before, I am stubborn and I really need some regimen in my life that I can count on that allows me to plan and accomplish my goals.

Lots of things can interfere with my sync.  Lately, it’s been some minor surgery and the extended recovery time.  Between the meds, the pain and irritation, the soft diet and the lack of sleep because I can’t seem to sleep for more than a few hours lying down I am just not in sync.  That is not a grasp for sympathy.  I’m just saying that all these things combine make it extremely difficult to focus on any kind of work and even the simplest goal seems beyond the reach of my attention span.  This blog alone is a day late and has been eluding me.  I know that on the other end of this recovery (still a couple of weeks away) I will be better than ever and will have a greater ability to focus and keep things more organized than I did before the surgery.  So there is a positive to all this.

Illness is not the only thing that can break my rhythm.  Computer problems (don’t you hate system updates that cause hardware drivers to fail?), technical problems with phones, unexpected life events, outside forces rearranging your schedule and just the daily interruptions.  They all effect our rhythm.

Now sometimes, that can be a very good thing.  Sometimes we need our rhythm broken so that we aren’t working by rote.  Being creative means embracing the changes around us, but you still have to find the time and discipline to sit down and express that creativity.  This means that you have to at least generally have a common time that you can set aside and say, “This is my creative time” and then adhere to schedule to the best of your ability.

Sometimes when I am on my walk along the river, there are flowers along the bank.  These are very special flowers in that they behave like morning glories but are a lot larger.  Just as the sun comes up, these flowers open up their petals and face the sun.  You can watch them follow the sun.  When they sun gets too hot, they close back up and don’t open again until the next morning.  The window for watching this phenomenon is very short but it happens like clockwork.

That’s what we have to do.  We have to find our place in the sun as creative and figure out how to use that time to make the most of our creativity.  I figure that is God can work out a schedule for these unique and beautiful flowers, then He can do the very same thing for me and show me that time when it is best to embrace the Son.  There are going to be times when that just isn’t going to happen.  Life is not always cooperative.   Sometimes, the storm clouds brew and it’s too dark for those flowers to open up.  But just like those flowers, I look forward to those moments in the Son and it leaves me hopeful and grateful for those moments.  So much so that I can get past the clouds and the gray knowing that tomorrow is another opportunity.