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Advice on Organization from a Disorganized kind of Guy

This would be funny if it wasn’t so true, or if this kind of thing didn’t happen to me all the time.

Two weeks ago I sat down to write my February contribution to the My One Word blog. I have to tell you it was good – actually brilliant! It was the type of essay that would touch your head and your heart…make you think and cry at the same time.

But that’s not what you’re reading here today. In fact you won’t see it for a few more months.

Here is what happened: I couldn’t find the list of monthly topics we were given. I printed it out and put it some place but who knows where. But that’s okay, I am familiar with this program, been doing it for a few years. February is all about using your word as a lens.

Actually it’s not.

Of course I didn’t know that until after investing 3 hours of work on the masterpiece. Turns out February is all about setting up a system so your word can take root. Or, to put it another way; the month is all about getting organizied.

That’s not exactly one of my strengths.

In fact I am so disorganized that I’ve actually tried to spin this character flaw as some type of unique charm. You know what I am talking about – people like me do it all the time! No matter how chaotic the office may appear we’ll actually claim that: “There’s a system to it all, a method to the madness. This is how I am at my best! It may look messy but I actually know where everything is.”

Yeah everything except the car keys, cell phone, vital bills and documents and that My One Word sheet. “Now where exactly did I put that?”

So, I was going to blow off this month. After all who am I to lecture on organization?

But a mist all the clutter, sitting by itself on the coffee table, is a little 3 by 5 inched index card.  Maybe I do have something to say.

You see, first thing every morning I turn to that card for my quiet time. It’s kind of like my cheat sheet. Scribbled on it is an outline (dare, I say an organized plan,) for my morning prayer. I stole it from a book a few months ago, and it has made all the difference in the world:

1. Dedicate this day to God

2. Put on Jesus- remember who God wants you to be today

3. Today is all about Him – not you

4. Give gratitude for what God has done for you

5. Give gratitude for the Cross

6. Give gratitude for the Resurrection

7. Give gratitude for the Ascension

8. Give gratitude for the Spirit that will guide you today

9. What are your expectations? What do you hope God do today?

It all takes 10 to 15 minutes. Some mornings I may spend more time thinking about number 3 and other days it may be number 8 that gets the majority of my attention. Since all this is somewhat new to me many times I’ve had to open up my eyes, glance down at the card, and remember what’s next on the list.

It’s not natural. And at times using the card feels a little artificial, but it always manages to take me deeper. Yes I’d love to have a prayer life that just flows naturally, but the truth is – for right now – I need a system, a structure, an organized plan to get me there.

What does all of this have to do with My One Word? Well, in 2011 I selected “seed” because I want to do something small that makes a big difference in the lives of others. But before I do that, maybe I need to plant a little seed in my own life.

So come back next month, or the month after – whenever it is we’re supposed to talk about lenses. You will really like what I wrote. You know- assuming I can find it by then.

Doug Wahl is a former award winning broadcast journalist. His first book Gradually to God will come out in this spring. He is also the founder of the Off the Wahl blog on facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Off-The-Wahl-Eassys-in-taking-the-next-step-in-a-walk-with-Christ/108832095861048?v=wall

How To Move Forward: Embrace the Doubt

To move forward in a life with God, I have to keep moving forward in my faith. That’s not easy. I’m an optimist by nature, but life many days makes me a skeptic and a cynic. Life makes me doubt. And so my faith comes and goes, ebbing and flowing like the sea I live beside.

I love the ocean, but it scares me—I can’t always see what’s with me when I’m out there. The other night, I dreamt I could see through it, to see the sharks swimming below me. Sharks terrify me. I’m not sure why. I’ve never even seen Jaws. I think it comes from nightmares I had as a kid. Something would pull me into the deep, something I would look for but could never see. My legs would burn, like sliced by knives. Or teeth.

I did triathlons for five months last year. This involved swimming a mile across the channel separating Wilmington from Wrightsville Beach. It was terrifying. I got tired. My arms got heavy. I would remember my childhood nightmare and panic. But I was in the middle of it, with nowhere to go, forever from land on either side, and so my only option was to swim.

Faith is like that. More accurately, fear and doubt and skepticism and cynicism are like that. Faith is the thing that gets us to land. The other stuff is what nearly kills us while we’re out to sea.

To truly know our faith, to know the depth it reaches and the expanse it covers, we’ve got to swim through it. We’ve got to throw ourselves somewhere that we’re not sure we can survive.

To lose my faith, to forsake Christianity—this would throw my whole life into upheaval. But that’s not what keeps me clinging to it. It is what made my doubt so powerful, so profound, but it’s not why I doubt no longer.

The truth is, I still doubt. Not always. But some days. Some days, I still think, “If God exists, then …” It’s not pleasant. But it’s human. And is it not our humanity that makes us capable of knowing the divine?

I feel more and more crazy every time I read the latest scientific study proving evolutionary theory and disproving miracles and this, that, and the other, basically laying out Christianity and belief in God as irrational and insane. I’m rational. I want to be sane. But I’ve accepted that maybe I’m not. I see stories like those of the Villanova managers, the boys with cerebral palsy who help an elite college basketball team win. The coaches and players embrace and love them, despite their drooling and lack of muscle control and how they can only move by motorized wheelchair.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, in those stories I also see God. And so I keep the faith. Rather, the faith keeps me. And for that I’m grateful.

As Paul wrote those two thousand years ago, right now all I can see is like looking through fog, but one day it’ll all fade away, and I’ll see Him face to face. I believe for a simple reason. I am no scientist. No expert of quantum mechanics. No psychic. I am but a simple man, a writer, one who puts into words the things I think, hopefully in ways that people can understand.

There is but one thing I know, without a doubt: The days I believe and the days I see God are more beautiful and more full and more alive than the days I do not. Life with God is just better.

The sea terrifies me, but it’s also given me some of my best memories. Floating in it, holding Katie. It was one of the best trips to the beach ever, my first with her. Floating on it, surfing to a beautiful sunrise. In the ocean I have known fear, but there I have also known God.

And so in my pursuit of Him, I’ll just keep moving forward. I can’t see the end. But I can see just far enough ahead to take another few steps, and that’ll get me there.

Brandon is a Wilmington-based professional freelance journalist, copywriter, and editor. He is the author of The Edge of Legend: An Incredible Story of Faith and Basketball (Port 2010) and has contributed to ESPN The Magazine, ESPN.com, and Our State (NC) magazine, in additional to myriad regional publications. He blogs at brandonsneed.com.

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