Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

* From McLaren's Commentary

This week my heart has been aching. It hurts now as I write...

I have a congenital heart murmur condition and it would probably be prudent for me to have it examined again since I am on the other side of 50. As a teen-athlete getting physicals for school sports the attending doctor would always react to my heart murmur in the stethoscope with the question, "Are you allowed to play sports?" I and my mom would have to assure the physicians that all was cool.

When I have a lot on my mind, my heart tends to hurt. One thing weighing on me is teaching a class of 26 ninth graders "Study Skills" with all the joy and suffering therein. 45 days, 80 minutes a day. This along with the day-in/day-out school counselor responsibilities which are usually fairly demanding. I am grateful for the opportunity to help kids with their lives but have decided to not teach just study skills, which would be akin to having both mine and their teeth drilled daily, filling the cavities in their time-management and task-completion skills. Drill baby drill...whirring away.

I want to provide them the underlying reasons for upping their life skills in general, and--as the cliche goes--light a fire rather than filling a bucket. There are some signs that my approach is working. Like wood that is wet, some of the students need me to provide more bellow-like oxygen on their nascent kindling.  So often we confuse our task completion with kids as the productivity metric versus what the students have actually internalized and taken away after the class is over.  

On the plus side, I have decided to start exercising in the afternoon again (along with the mornings still) to help drive the demon worry from my heart. I used to exercise always in the afternoon but then moved to an early am schedule for lifting and running/aerobic which has worked out dandily. Yet, it does mean that I am up at 4:30 so that I can get everything done and prep for my class by 7:35 am. Which is leading to some serious sleep deprivation. When I wake up at night to take a piss, my mind has this to-do list that begins to download into my brain after returning to bed like some massive iPhone App updates. I lay there often for over an hour before sleep returns.

It is not really worry per se but more like I have a lot to do and I am trying to figure out how to do it on the metaphorical white board of my bedroom ceiling. So, I lay on my back thinking through issues and my plans of addressing the demands. And, then my heart starts to hurt. Bad.

Since today is Good Friday and I am heading down to my dad's on Easter Sunday and won't be blogging then, I decided to get a jump on this week's essay and finish it up. Tomorrow I will be grading the students' essays since I usually use Saturdays for work things that need sustained attention. So doing is a hold-over from my 8 years in the Ph.D. program. Saturdays were the time to get the work done for the program. Long, long days. Sometimes, 16 hours. After the Ph.D. program was finished, I then used Saturdays to write my book.

A kid in class yesterday asked me how long it took me to write my book. About four years, with the last two years (when the Ph.D. was over) almost every Saturday. A lot of pain and suffering in-between those covers. Yet, it was exhilarating to get to the top of that apex author mountain and actually get it done, even though I was coughing out figurative blood through broken teeth. It hurt that bad.

When Jesus was coming to the end of his earthly ministry, concluding at Golgotha, He tells His disciples to "Not let your heart be troubled." In John 14, the chapter starts out with this encouraging admonition. Then, He repeats it again later in the discourse (verse 27). Here is Jesus providing comfort to his close friends on the eve of his greatest trial...his crucifixion.  A magnanimous spiritual virtue is to be more concerned about others than oneself and Jesus demonstrates this mightily.

Soon, his disciples are going to scatter like cats on fire, and he calmly and mindfully imparts peace to them. I have tried to keep His words front and center as my heart has been aching all week. I may have a physical ailment that needs addressing. But, I think it is more a spiritual ailment. My worry is not adding much to the work. I just need to tranquility to trust that everything is going to work out OK.

God is at work even though it is rarely easy.