Slumping Middles in the Story of You

A summer breeze flips the calendar page to August 1. You yelp. “How time has flown! The year is more than half past gone! How am I ever going to accomplish my goals with vacation looming, yard and garden demands, back-to-school shopping? The long golden days of summer are slipping away and year-end holidays are looming in the distance. Oh, no!”  

Take a breath. Exhale. This is good. The end of summer is a prime time to check your course. Pull out that “Story of You” theme and see where you are. Link to my Jan 4th Post on Goal setting: hoosierink.blogspot.com/2012/01/story-of-you.html

A lot can change in seven months. Unforeseen opportunities or tragedies call for a course adjustment. A cruise ship sailing from London to New York doesn’t set course and forget it.  The same holds true if you’re paddling a canoe across a pond. Constant course corrections ensure the correct destination.

If even a few items are marked off the goal list, you’ve made progress. If not, this is a reality check. It’s time to break them into smaller steps or to chuck them overboard as unrealistic, unimportant, or untimely.

Have you lost focus? Are you exhausted? You have spent 214 days journeying to this point. From this perspective you may see that The Great Teacher has lessons you’d hoped to avoid. You may find yourself sitting in the doldrums, a waiting room. If God put you there, the appropriate thing to do is wait. Yes, acknowledge and submit to God’s sovereignty, but then watch and wait for the moving of the Spirit Wind.

It's the middle of the story for 2012. Maybe you're right on course, but if the middle is sagging, don't lament. This is the perfect time to trim the sails.*  Just as you'd take a sagging middle and edit out the unproductive parts that don't move the story along, do the same thing with your life.

How’s the year unfolding? What needs tweaking in the 2012 Story of You? Don’t give up. Sail that craft all the way to port. I will prayerfully find a supporting scripture for anyone who leaves a comment.

Mary Allen lives in the Midwest. She was La Porte County Poet Laureate from 2010-2011 and serves as Arts in the Park Poetry Chair. Mary can be found on  The Barn Door.net, has published numerous articles, and has two real life stories in Kernels of Hope, an anthology released July 15 by Majesty House.

*Disclaimer: Any inaccuracies in sailing terms are due to total ignorance by this landlubber, but since all HI readers are highly intelligent and extraordinarily savvy, as well as good-looking, I know you'll get my drift.