Checklists

Nichole's list of things to get done sometime relatively soonish within the next month or so:

• Take down and pack up classroom [CHECK!]
• Neatly finish up the year with my students and make sure everything is done (grades, corrected assignments, etc..) [ALMOST CHECK!]
• Begin next year's planning of creating a curriculum for Alg I and Geometry so that next year isn't quite the mess that it was this year
• Begin next year's planning for my own advisory by creating an end of year goal/end of quarter goals so that next year isn't quite the mess that it was this year
• Wash/dry clean all my professional clothes [CHECK!]
• Pack up apartment [in progress CHECK!]
• Slowly start to move all of my belongings [CHECK!]
• Find truck to move large furniture [CHECK! I've also recruited several strong men to help me move]
• Actually move all of my things [CHECK!]
• Get settled in the new apartment after moving all of my things [in progress]
• Make sure I switch my address for all those important adult things so my bills come to the right place
• Finally get around to getting a Jersey license
• Figure out all my travel plans since I'm going everywhere this summer: New apartment, Pittsburgh, visiting camp somewhere in there, Ohio for Luke and Amanda's wedding, back to Jersey to be baptized, down to Myrtle Beach with the fam, back to Jersey to finish moving and having a visit from Lynn (hopefully!), Rhode Island for Big Picture training, back to Jersey to start lesson planning, Jamaica, back to Jersey for the start of training, maybe travelling to Indiana to accompany some guy ;) then back to Jersey, finally back to school...
• Start exercising again cause I'm way out of shape [in progress]
• Read some books/novels to figure out what I want to read with my students next year

I'm going to stop there...

Can you tell that I am secretly a Type-A person? Ha... so it might not be so secret... While not completely a bad thing, there are some downfalls. For the past 2 years I've been trying to overcome the negatives that come with this personality type. The main one being what has been happening to me today. I often spend a lot of time creating checklists of things to do and planning out my day minute by minute... but it's not always good. Most often doing this leads to stress and becoming just flat out overwhelmed. Thoughts of my to-do lists end up stopping me from getting good sleep.

So as my morning quickly became frazzled today, I took a moment to stop and realize that

1. I'm still kind of sick and don't want to push myself too far
2. There's no need to stress myself out like that and finally
3. I hadn't even stopped to spend time with my Father

A.J. often quotes a Proverb that says something along the lines of "A man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."

Psalm 139 tells us that the Lord goes before us and follows after us, that He knew every moment of our lives before a single day had passed.

In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow or about all the little details... rather, take it one day at a time.

That is incredible and that is what I need to trust. I can make checklists galore. I can stress myself til there's no tomorrow. But there's really no point in that, is there? I could lay out my entire summer, but I really have no control over the way it goes. I could get sick yet again, a flight might be delayed, a car might break down. There are infinite events that could occur that could completely throw my entire checklist into the paper shredder. So why stress?

Checklists aren't necessarily bad. I like being about to cross things off. It makes me feel accomplished. I like writing things down so that I will remember that I need to do them. But having this characteristic of a Type A personality becomes bad when we let these things start to worry us. Just like many things in life, checklists aren't bad in and of themselves... they only become a problem when we let them come between us and our Creator, when we allow them to steal our focus, when we give them the foothold of taking away our peace and joy.

I definitely learned this lesson several years ago after spending a summer in Jamaica. During that time I really was hit with what's important in life and what it looks like to keep my eyes on Christ throughout every moment of my life.... almost 2 years of life back in the U.S. has pushed that lesson to the back of my mind.... time to pull it to the front again.