The Leap Day Phenomenon

Leap Day fascinates me.  Living a day that only exists once every four years is curiously like living in a time traveling time warp. After all, how else could you add a day to my month--a whole 24 hours that appears out of thin air! Certainly not through a mere paper-shuffling, calendar-quibbling, name-game formality. Time warp is a much more delightful and intriguing theory behind Leap Day.

And so I am convinced that we need to celebrate Leap Day to its full potential. Honestly, who doesn't need an extra day in their lives? I for one am imagining all I could accomplish on a "bonus" day: catch up on every email I've been procrastinating on, plan the next six months of teaching, dig myself out of my (let's just be real, shall we?) disastrously messy room, file my taxes, and finish that big project I've been working on. 

But while I'm being real I should probably also admit that I'm going to need a whole lot more than one Leap Day to get it all done.  So, all fantastic time warps aside, I've been pondering this problem of "getting it all done" lately and have realized something.

If I am always feeling that I need an extra minute or hour or day, then perhaps what I really need is less packed into that minute or hour or day.  
Perhaps the real problem lies not in the constraints of time but in my lack of constraint.  Perhaps the root of my stress is that I am a chronic over-committer, finding it stupendously difficult to say no to things without feeling guilty. 
And perhaps...just perhaps...I am not alone in this.

We women know how to choose the best-tasting watermelon. We can decide in seconds if an outfit is adorable or homely. Yet we somehow lose our decision-making skills when it comes to regulating what we do or don't commit to. The worst part about this is that if you take on too many good things, you are overbooked, unavailable, and worn out when the best things come along.

So here are just a few questions that I've resolved to ask myself when considering adding something additional to my plate:

• Is this going to advance God's kingdom or myself? 
• Am I tempted to refuse this commitment simply because it would take me outside my comfort zone? 
• Where is my mission field right now? Everyone has a mission field for each season of your life. So if you don't know what yours is, discovering God's mission field for you should be your first step. Knowing this will give you much clearer vision for what you should take on and what you should turn down. 
• Is saying no painful because I am more worried about people not liking me if I don't please them than I am concerned about what God wants me to be doing right now?

These questions are only the beginning--I would love to hear what questions you ask when facing decisions!

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“.TimeMachine.,” © 2008 Sachin Sandhu, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.