Don’t “Get Your Head in the Game”…yet

Remember the High School Musical song “Get Your Head in the Game”?  That’s what I tried to do several times in the last week while trying to recover from some sort of flu.  I started feeling sick last Thursday, but figured I could just get my ‘head in the game,’ and so I went to school the next day. 

Bad idea.

I felt worse as the day went on, particularly as the bathroom became my closest friend.  I rested that night and Saturday morning big time.  I’m good!  So I started working around the house. 

Bad idea.

I got worse, but kinda felt better as the evening came.  I decided to go ahead and keep my assignment to teach Sunday school the following day. 

Bad idea.

By then I was just plain out of it.  I had to call off going to school the next day.  I rested like crazy the rest of Sunday and Monday.  I legitimately felt better by Monday night, but this time I listened to God’s voice (also known as my wife’s voice) and stayed home from school on Tuesday as well, just to make sure I had truly recovered.

Why share this?  For one, it explains a little of why I disappeared from my blog since mid-December, but also I saw a parallel to our lives here.

Psalm 1 talks about a person who loves the Lord and His teachings as being like a tree planted by a stream that “bears fruit in season.”  I think we all tend to think we are perpetual motion machines that should just keep on going at the same rate.  Instead, we are seasonal.  Our lives fluctuate.  We experience different seasons, and we would do well to embrace the seasons instead of just seeing them as random blips to move past. 

What season have you been in?  Maybe it has been a great one.  That’s good!  But maybe it has been a more challenging one.  Maybe you’ve experienced a loss lately.  Maybe you’ve been crushed by some disappointment in other people or even God.  It could be any challenge.  Don’t be took quick to ‘get back into the game’ like I was with the flu.  Sometimes that just makes it worse.  When you lose someone or a friendship, for example, people will sometimes say “just move on” or “forget about it.”  But grieving is a season.  And if you don’t grieve you just bury parts of yourself that will come back at some later time. 

So, yes, God can, and will, help us get our ‘heads back in the game,’ but this season is part of His plan too.  Be patient and listen to Him in this season.  It says later in 1 Peter “Humble yourself, therefore, under His mighty hand and He will lift you up in due time.”