focus

Saturday, October 14:
I watched Gladiator this morning as I finally got around to attacking the endless battle of conquering dirty laundry in my life.

“What we do in our life echoes in eternity.”

Around noon I found a quiet spot to have hazelnut flavored coffee with God next to the first tiny pink bud on my African Violets.

I feel so distracted, tired, sad.

At least the plants respond to my sporadic watering and careful weeding of their plastic beds on the sill. I sit down and stare through the mosquito gauze to where a few two-year-olds play in the garden below. A heavily pregnant mom moves some toys out of the way for the boys to push each other around on the paved path.

Yesterday afternoon we celebrated Fall Fest on campus and it appeared to me that the offspring of this student body had doubled in the past year. I loved on my friend’s six-month-old baby girl―Liz―all afternoon and could not get enough of her tiny body squiggling in my lap, warming me all over by her constant oogge-ling and chewing on my fingers whenever she could get her toothless gums around one.

Back in Rome, Maximus lost everything he loved to save the Empire from evil. His innocent son and wife killed by his enemies. The honor and respect he earned through a lifetime of service to Marcus Aurelius stripped on a frosted morning, exchanged for an existence of slavery to entertainment-hungry idiots who cheered as life ebbed out of slain corpses into the burning sand.

As I speak to God about this, I read the story of a king who became a slave, a slave who grew up as a carpenter, a carpenter who matured into a teacher, this Teacher who defied Hell itself.

God whispers in my memory another mentor’s words to a his young protégé: you need to focus on your mission like a soldier has to spend all of his life on disciplined execution of his orders, like a farmer that spends all he has on daily efforts through all seasons for a harvest to grow, like an athlete training day in and day out to win the Olympics…

What do You want me to do with my life? You sent me here with a specific purpose sixteen months ago, but today I stare out at the families multiplying everywhere and I wonder…who did you make me to be? A mother? A warrior? A lover? For the sake of whom?

I must focus. Drink up the coffee. Get the wet laundry out. Buy new trash bags. Catch up on my reading. Sacrifice my hopes. Give up my mortal desires.

Obey what I do know and just get the job done…

“How will this story end?”