Work for this Week (and beyond)

I'm breaking with the recent tradition of posting on Fridays and writing on a Monday, a day which I have a particular aversion to (I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one). Why do I harbour such feelings toward the first day of the working week? It takes me forever to get back into things, I'm so incredibly unproductive on Mondays and it drives me crazy. By the time I feel I am getting somewhere, the day's nearly done. And yet I'm about to write about how my biggest challenges relate to stopping and listening... interesting, huh? 

If you're wondering what my schedule currently looks like, Mondays and Fridays are my days at the TWR office and Tuesday through Thursday I teach English in kindergartens and schools in the city. When it comes to TWR, I am currently devoting about one day a week to my role as an assistant for  European ministries and one/one and a half days to my Support Raising. Combined with my teaching job, this means a fair amount of juggling responsibilities. As I do my best to keep on top of things this year, my biggest challenge will be recognizing the limits of what I can do within a day or a week and when to stop.

Yesterday it hit me that my biggest spiritual challenge might be learning to listen to God. I was reminded that I'm really bad at listening to God- I know no Christian finds this easy and I don't mean this in a particularly self-denigrating way- but I am really terrible at this. In the past couple of years I've come quite a way in other aspects of the faith I want to live out on a daily basis. I've become fairly comfortable, for example, with telling God about my struggles, and I feel privileged to be able to pray for others, whether they are close friends or people in places I know very little about. Yet I've forgotten the need to be still and listen. I want to find ways to listen to God more. In fact, I think I really need to do this. 

I've just had the thought that perhaps you feel the same way. If so, it'd be really encouraging to hear from you and perhaps it'd be helpful for us both. Thanks for reading. Whatever is ahead of you, I wish you a good week. 

Rachel