Back in April I was posting on the chapters in the book Trust God by Jerry Bridges. I ended with chapters 5 and 6 and then didn’t come back to it here. I actually stepped away from that book, although not forgetting its lessons. But I am still struggling. Mostly I’m just not content – more like frustrated and irritated and impatient.

I’ve still been searching and praying and hoping it would all sink in, and the Holy Spirit would have something to work with to reform me. Some days my shortest prayer is “I believe, help my unbelief” but more often it’s just the short “Change me” that I throw out.

This month has been more of the same. The free audio book from Christian Audio last month was Hearing God by Dallas Willard. I downloaded it right at the end of the month and started listening. It’s been interesting because I am arguing with the book a little bit. Partly because I know that this is an author who is right on some things and not necessarily right on others. (I actually know that is true about all authors, and the good ones tell you that about themselves. But I’ve approached this book with extra care.) Perhaps I want to believe it so much I’m leery of the message.

Anyway, it’s made for great listening because I actually pay attention to it all and then journal and think and study to see how I really understand the points he’s making. For example, Dallas Willard was talking about the will of God and when something isn’t the will of God. For example, when someone sins or does something in direct contradiction to God’s word. A firm believer in God’s sovereignty over everything takes issue with that pretty easily. But I also understand where he is coming from. But for some reason this bugged me a bit, perhaps as I was struggling with my bout of lassitude and trying to clarify my role versus God’s will.

I turned first to Jerry Bridges – chapter 7 of Trusting God as a matter of fact. He has some vocabulary there to help as he states:

Our duty is found in the revealed will of God in the Scriptures. Our trust must be in the sovereign will of God…” p121

He actually started the chapter with this “The knowledge of His sovereignty is meant to be an encouragement to pray, not an excuse to lapse into a sort of pious fatalism.” p113

Then it gets even deeper. In my daily reading I’m back to the book of Job and we happen to have picked up a book on the book of Job by Derek Thomas. That book isn’t quite what I was expecting so far, but on the first page he points us to Calvin’s Institutes 1:15-18 so I pull down our version of the Institutes (thanks Beard!) and start wading into the deep end with Calvin. It’s on God’s providence and scripturally shows how all is under His sovereign control even when the person is clearly going against God’s revealed will.

Now, it sounds like I’ve gotten way off track, but I am struggling at work right now because I don’t like it, I don’t like the interruptions and the work load and the helpless feeling of not being able to accomplish good work and even when I do not having a moment to appreciate it before the next impossible problem comes along. But what Trusting God (and all kinds of resources and Bible reading over the past few years) has shown me is that I am wrong to be do discontented with where God has put me. And I want to fix that attitude. I want to love God so much that I will be happy wherever He has me.

Add on to all of that the fact that yesterday was a crummy day. I got very stressed out over 3 different things (all at once, so I was very efficient about it). My prayers were not very humble or God-honoring and I was quite disappointed at the end of the day (in my self). Will I never grow? We’ve (God and me) been working on this for awhile, surely I am trainable enough that I could change a little bit by now?

Well, my God is an awesome God (I love that song) and He speaks to me and sometimes, when I open my ears, I hear Him! (see, Dallas Willard is rubbing off on me already

This morning I got one of those emails from LinkedIn with links to articles you may find interesting. Often they are about computer security (I found one today I wish the entire Windows support team at work would read), or on how to treat your employees well, or how to manage your boss, or how to multitask (remember the rant on that earlier this month?).

Today there was an article on reducing stress. You better believe I clicked on that thing! And God spoke to me, like he was saying “if you won’t listen to Me this way, let me try another language”. Go ahead, click on the link and read it. It won’t take long and it’s a nice read. (Doesn’t it remind you a bit of what I learned about someone stepping on my story?)

By the way, I love the interview with Louis C.K. and I agree with him completely, but for some reason I still couldn’t translate it into my issues at work.

So, my new strategy (which is an old strategy, note the name of my blog) is to lower my expectations from perfection, change my expectations about what I’m supposed to get done every day, and get used to not getting what I want, except really I am seeking to change what I want so that when I get whatever I get, it’s what I wanted and I’m happy – content.

See, another book I have sitting here for a re-read is The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs and this is what I’m after:

Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.

I feel like a broken record, there is this post from earlier this year. But this topic is top of my “things I want changed” and I will keep working on this until I’m changed.

Here’s a typical article of the many I’ve seen  of this year about multitasking being bad.

And I don’t argue with the main points. If I were a writer, blogger, coder, analyst, tax preparer, etc. I would agree completely.

In fact, in my past jobs where I work, I’ve been a big fan of single-tasking. I was a business analyst for a year and it was heaven to have uninterrupted hours where I could pull together my data, build my pivot tables, validate my data, write my analysis. I could focus and pay attention to what I was doing.

I still had my email open and my instant messaging window open (requirements at work), but I didn’t get that much traffic.

Before that, doing dedicated support I could still focus for periods of time. I worked one email or one request at a time. Instant messaging was useful to ask quick questions, but there weren’t that many. Sure, I probably did some fun chatting with friends at work but it was usually between requests.

I make it sound ideal, and there was probably more multitasking going on than I let on. The primary reason is that many tools take time to log into or to bring up the next screen and I am very likely to squeeze in something else while I’m waiting for that.

I know that right now I spend my days multitasking just about every minute of the day. And I try to figure out why so I can figure out what I can change.

Some of it is indeed that pulling up a new website, clicking through the 3 screens of a tool where I’m submitting something where each screen can take a minute or two to come up, or waiting for someone who wants to ask me a question who then takes 3 or 4 minutes to figure out what their question is, leaves large gaps of time that I feel I should be doing something. (Because I never get it all done at work these days.)

On a larger scale, much of what I do is along the lines of mind-reading, and since I’m not good at that it really turns into a short Q&A session, where I guess at the 3 possible things this user’s cryptic comment could mean, then reply to their email with the possibilities and some questions to help narrow it down so I can actually understand what their issue or request is. This means I then have to wait for their response.

Or I have to pull together the data to be changed and then send that off to the technical team to actually run the scripts to make that change. So I have a lot of things I track in a todo list so I can remember what the next step is when it gets back. That kind of things turns my day into a series of short tasks, 3 to 10 minutes in duration, so by the end of the day I haven’t so much multitasked as just singletasked 50 to 80 times.

The primary impediment to singletasking at work is the instant messages from end users. I am still struggling to figure out how to get the message out that a request to our mailbox can’t be finished in an hour. Some of them take 2 or 3 days. So users send another email which takes up more of our time to sweep through the inbox, figure out where the current request is sitting, and then figure out how to reply (or ignore if we’re going to respond to the original request soon anyway) the request for an update. And if they are really in a hurry (and really, no one sends us a request until it’s urgent and important and critical, and the business is going to fail if their specific request isn’t finished in an hour) they will instant message me or my coworker and spend 20 minutes in short bursts telling us why we should drop everything else we’re doing and go work on their request.

What I’ve tried to do there is coordinate with my coworker so one of us can go on Do Not Disturb (work doesn’t like us to not be online at all). When I’m on DND, Bobby gets my pings plus his own. Not that they reroute, but that people know to go to him if they can’t get to me. Here’s where I work very hard to protect the rest of the team so people don’t see their names and start pinging them. I try to limit it to Bobby and me. I’d love to get rid of it altogether, but that would be a huge culture shift at work.

But with two mailboxes to monitor (mine gets about 60 emails a day, the tool support mailbox gets over 100 a day), plus actual support work and data verification and analysis, plus the instant messages, and the fact that we need a few more people (ok, a lot more people) working on our support team, reality is just that we have to keep a few balls in the air all the time.

Every time I see an article like the one above I pass it on to Anthony. He truly needs to get better at singletasking and the suggestions and advice in these emails make sense for him. Then we talk briefly about why it wouldn’t work for my situation. And then I go to work and it’s like a firehose turned on, until I walk away from it at the end of the day. No wonder I’m tired.

Trying to define how I felt yesterday I came up with lassitude and looked it up to see if I was right. It fits.

But of course I had to then click on Languor, which led to Lethargy which led to the synonym discussion below.

lethargy, languor, lassitude, stupor, torpor mean physical or mental inertness. lethargy implies such drowsiness or aversion to activity as is induced by disease, injury, or drugs <months of lethargy followed my accident>. languor suggests inertia induced by an enervating climate or illness or love <languor induced by a tropical vacation>. lassitude stresses listlessness or indifference resulting from fatigue or poor health <a depression marked by lassitude>

Just so you have the vocabulary.

Then today, while reading further in the biography of Amy Carmichael, A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot, I ran across a few things. First up is Mathew Arnold’s tribute to his father in Rugby Chapel, found on page 225.

Hm… no languor or weariness.  I’m not up to that, obviously.

In the chapter before that Amy wrote this prayer-poem (p 221)

A tad convicting and a good reminder for someone feeling a bit like a clod this week.

This morning I received a call from another woman in my denomination. Not someone I’m very close to, but we do get along well and share values and traits. She asked how I was doing and I forgot to give the usual response   I gave a fairly honest answer that work has me stressed these days and I’m tired. She shared such encouraging words with me and prayed for me (and both of us) before we ended the call. God is surrounding me, and I’m trying to listen and live out the truth.

Well, this post doesn’t seem to be very organized, and the points that were brought home to me today may not be clear to anyone else reading this. But my God is good and faithful and that is the important part.