Alas, I knew this lifestyle couldn’t last. Not only would I eventually run out of money, but I needed to get back to chasing after my vocation.

These five steps are helping me get my life back on track.

1. Seek God’s will.
This is the perfect season to reevaluate. Revisit the deep truths and big questions of life. Spend time in scripture and in prayer. Use tools like the prayer of examen and free writing to pray through where you are coming from, and where you are going.

Don’t do this alone! Ask friends and mentors what you should you do differently. Meet with a spiritual director to help you listen to the Holy Spirit. The goal of this might be as grand as determining your vocation, or as specific as creating a “Stop. Start. Continue.” list.

2. Make sure your situation is sustainable.

Getting your life back on track will likely take much longer than you would like. You have huge decisions to make here, and you don’t want them to be ruled by a shrinking bank account. You may have to find a part time job, a roommate or a tighter budget. Do whatever you have to do to make sure you are stable enough to dream.

3. Make a list.
Once I’m off my game, things start falling through the cracks. Getting on top of this is as simple as making a list. A good list has two types of items “Big Projects” that are broken into “Next Steps.”

Put everything on the list. Usually the top item on my list is “make a list” followed by basics like “grocery shopping” and “brush teeth”. Everything goes on the list. Nothing feels better than marking things off the list!

4. Build a schedule.
Unstructured time is the bane of both productivity and creativity. When time is unassigned, it will get wasted. Michael Hyatt suggests creating a budget because “the only difference is that you plan how you will spend your time rather than your money.” If you sleep eight hours a week, that leaves you with 112 waking hours to spend. Use them wisely!

5. Envision your long term goal.
One of the scariest questions I’ve been asked is “what do you want?” Perhaps it’s a deeply seeded fear of failure, or anger about my current reality. What helps is thinking long term. I can’t fix my problems for tomorrow, but I can begin to dream about my life fifteen years from now.

Currently, I am working on a fifteen year plan. When you write something down it becomes tangible. This gives you something specific to work toward. One element of this plan is my vocation. My goal is that by 2028, I will be spending 50% teaching and developing leaders in a local church, and 50% of my time developing leaders in a national missionary movement. Once I had the courage to write that down, it is easy to work backwards to figure out what to do next.

What do you do when you get off your game?

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Herni Nouwen, Spiritual Direction

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Henri Nouwen – Spiritual Direction

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Nouwen (1932-1996) is what you’d call a “pastor’s pastor.”  He served as a Catholic priest, a teacher at Harvard and Yale, and most notably, as a caretaker for those with severe handicaps in a L’Arche community.  Despite his considerable success Nouwen struggled his entire life with a true sense of vocation, sexuality and depression.  He is most known for books like Wounded Healer, and his focus on the scriptural image of the Prodigal son.

Spiritual Direction is a collection of essays, speeches and notes published posthumously.  They deal with the deep questions that must be answered in order to listen to and follow God’s call.  Along the way, he shares about his own struggles.  Probably the most powerful are his thoughts on the “spirituality of the body,” where he shares about his struggle to commit to God amidst questions of vocation, aging and sexuality.

It’s hard to capture why it’s important to read Nouwen, so I’ll leave it with this quote:

“For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to Love God.  I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life…and avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself.  I have failed many times, but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me.  The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by God?”

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