The Orchestras Melody

Tamara is on the bottom left :)

I got a great chance to hear from one of my great friends this week. Sister Gray. Sister Gray was my advisor in BYUSA my freshman year. She was great! She was a great example to me and I look up to her a lot. I value a lot of what she says.

She talked a lot about using our time wisely. I’ll be honest, I thought she was going to tell us technique and skills to acquire to be affective with our time, but she really taught us why we shouldn’t let time stress us out. I thought that was a lot wiser than a lot of little tricks to time management.

In her presentation she talked about juggling and an orchestra. She talked about how juggling really just makes you stressed. Instead of throwing around all our activities and things to do, like you would while juggling, Tamara advised that we should smoothly use our time like a conductor of an orchestra. I don’t know much about music, but I have watched Mack Wilberg, the conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle choir, and whatever he does makes the choir sound amazing. He knows how to ignite and calm the choir. He knows all the arrangements and when they come in and out. He orchestrates a balanced melody, something that needs to be more in my life. I can’t believe I’m going to write this, but in my orchestra of time and priorities, if you remember last week my number one goal was to be a good husband and father, I haven’t been on a date in 3 weeks and counting. My social life is roto. That means broken in Spanish. It is almost silent. Mack could ignite that by pointing at me and then do the raise your voice hand motion. I’m actually out of the house tonight. Does that count? But……I may or may not be writing while we are not doing anything. Pretty much I’m being really bad at my first goal. I just have a lot of broken strings in my orchestra since coming home from my mission that I have decided to slow down, but I think this is a wakeup call.  I feel good about the time I’m giving to my work, to school, church, and to my roommates. My orchestra sounds good, but my cellist’s strings are broken and something is missing in the melody.

I may not have a perfect melody in my life, yet, but I’m going to get it going. Here are some goals that I have to help me use my time better this next week that will point me in a direction toward the goals I set last week and will give my orchestra melody.  

1. I will go on a date next weekend
2. Buy a bike (going out today to look!)
3. Home Teaching done before the last week. 

I know that these goals aren’t really new but I am committing to have a great story about my date next week, a picture of me on my new bike, and update on home teaching (we have one person left. We just got her address Thursday night).  

Tamara gave us a fun list of truths and fallacies of time. I don’t remember them all, but I do remember how people always say, “I don’t have time.” False. You don’t own time. In reality you have the same amount as everyone else and it’s not like you can fully control it. In short we have all the time we really want. 

Sometimes in school and work there are deadlines that put a “limit” on time. Tamara taught us that we need to be able to go about our life in a “peaceful hurry”.  That would mean to be able to recognize the fallacy while being able to meet certain requirements. Since I’ve been home from my mission I feel like I have learned to be in a peaceful hurry. My first day home I didn’t have ANYTHING to do or ANYWHERE to be. I remember waking up and going for a run. While I was running I saw a beautiful sun rise. I stopped. Why? I realized I didn’t have anywhere to be but enjoying God’s creation. It was great!. I have tried to take that same attitude with me. Now that things have picked up with school and tasks when I start to feel stressed or burden I tell myself to stop. When I stop I seek to find the Lord somewhere. I loved how Tamara put it. She said that we need to push on the brake to slow our car down to let the Lord in front to show us the way.