When It Rains It Pours

And I’m not just talking about typhoon Marce cavorting her way into the region during the past few days. As seasons have been promised to us by God not only on Earth but also to our lives, I think that my “dry” season is finally coming to an end (if I discern it right). The week following my birthday unexpectedly became VERY BUSY. I was suddenly flooded with a load of assignments: a script for a corporate anniversary event, concept presentations for a big pharmaceutical company, a giant mall, and a famous film festival happening some time in December, and my writing assignments for CB Seminary. Whew! On top of all of that I had to coordinate some stuff for Kean’s birthday party this week, aside from the usual domestic duties that I have to do. I would really want to say that I was able to accomplish ALL of them. Unfortunately I didn’t. I had to ask for a deadline extension for some. *Sigh*

Although I was half-expecting that the Ber months promise to bring income-generating projects I still couldn’t help but be taken aback by the sudden downpour of deadlines. Well, this is very common for freelancers like me. When the work season’s lean, it really goes as far as scraping the bottom of the barrel. And when it picks up, I personally would want to clone myself just to be in different places, doing different things, at the same time. The movie “Multiplicity” starring Michael Keaton comes to mind at this point.

These are the times when you wish that a single day would have more than 24 hours. I don’t know about other writers out there but I have a certain writing process. It’s quite unhealthy actually and some pros might find it inefficient. I’m not really the type who would dwell on an assignment for a long period of time. When I need to write something down, I complete it in my head first before I translate it into actual text. I have to brew it in my mind before I can pour those thoughts on paper and serve it to my client. I have never written something that I didn’t finish in one sitting. There were few exceptions of course but generally I go in a single blow. Some writers are well-organized enough to write their pieces in phases. I even know some who are really good in outlining their materials first. Usually, when I try to pace myself, I lose momentum and then I lose interest altogether, and then writer’s block hits me. Since I am “supposedly” a professional writer, this means I’m in big trouble, right? :-)

Looking back at how I was able to “manage” my projects before – churning out scripts, concepts, and copy like I was a Word Factory – I realized that everything was only put together by God’s grace. If I were to rely on my own human strength, hampered by my ego, laziness, and mood swings, I would not have been able to sustain this “career” (sort of) for the past 9 years.

Although I’ve experienced flooding before, this downpour proves to be more challenging because not only am I juggling work and family life, there’s the Church ministry too. As Christians, we bear the burden of the Gospel Mandate. Our responsibilities in this world go beyond bringing home the bacon to our families. In fact, we have even been called to deny ourselves and carry the cross. But our families, especially our spouses, are our ministry too. They should also be our priority. And even if work has become a pain, we must still do our jobs well not because we want to please our boss but to please God. Ephesians 6:5 says that we are to labor at our jobs, not in proportion to the way our employer treats us, but according to the way God treats us. So basically whether it’s our job, our family, or our ministry, we have to do our best in all of these areas because it is God that we are serving through them.

Unfortunately, some well-meaning ministry workers take the phrase “God First” TOO LITERALLY. Yes, we should put God first but being absorbed in the ministry at the expense of spending quality time with our families totally defeats the purpose. How about work? Many times, I have prioritized them over my ministry and I end up feeling guilty. It’s really quite tricky, don’t you think? So how do we prioritize?

Lord, I can only do one thing at the same time. How am I supposed to carry them all out victoriously? Which one do you want me to tackle first?

The first thing to do is… PRAY

Before anything else, we should pray. I’ve never prayed this fervently before. Prior to becoming a Christian, my idea of prayer was submitting to God a grocery list of my immediate wants and desperate calls for help. I learned that Prayer is a form of Preparation, and not a 911 call to God. I only used to pray when things were out of hand already. Prayer of course is designed to adjust us to God’s will, and not to adjust God to our will. So in times like these when you just feel that you’re being pulled apart to different directions, praying fixes our compass. I have learned that no matter how well we cover the bases… no matter how sharply we have outlined our schedules… we are still not in control. It’s so surprising to see how traffic, typhoon and a whole gamut of trivial thingamajigs can cause chaos in our calendars.

So as we go through our own “flooding” in the coming days, weeks, months… stay afloat on the Power of Prayer.

On a lighter note, I found this photo on the internet and I just laughed out loud. :-)