Birthdays and Burdens

Today is my Daddy's birthday... And my heart is broken because I didn't call home to wish him a happy one. I love him so much, and I miss him a lot! Like a lot a lot. I really did want to call.

I am just drowning in homework and classes, plus trying to maintain a prayer life and practice as much as possible. But there are really no excuses. I had time. I should have called. It's way too late now... So I feel completely awful and am planning on doing my very best to make it up to him when I am in Michigan next week.

I am ranting because today I felt so burdened by my weakness and brokenness. Which is a direct result (a blessed result) of giving up my preferred time in the GPR and attending JPR sets instead. The reason being because in the JPR I strive intently to pursue God. I notice the time ticking slowly by, where as in the GPR I just sort of get lost in the beauty of the Lord and am most of the time in ecstasy of His presence until I have to go somewhere else. It is good for me to differentiate between the two because I feel like I can get a lot of focused study done in JPR.

In the JPR I set lists in my mind of what reading or journal writing gets done when, and guidelines/time limits to accomplish this. I am forced to keep focus on what I am doing or else my mind wanders and I daydream/fantasize about non-significant things. Side note - I do believe day dreaming is sometimes used by God and sometimes from God, but that is not the type I am speaking of. I am talking about those which you know are from the flesh. I hate these types of day dreams because after finding temporary satisfaction from the infatuation or thought I often times just wait for the 2 hour set to be done, sit there unengaged, or worse, leave.

Today however I did enjoy the sets I attended quite a bit and was able to engage (by God's grace) rather easily. In fact I found it rather next to impossible to not skip the all staff meeting and attend the 4-6p JPR set. However I think that was maybe influenced by other unmentionable reasons.