If I Dont Work, What Do I Do?

One of the better questions I had to answer when I started the process of allowing myself to be healed is, “What do I do when I don’t work?”  Wisely using your down time to recover from the week, and engaging your family, is a difficult, but exciting discovery process.  The question you have to answer first is, “How long has it been since you did nothing?”

Nothing is a hard thing to do, but for a short period of time on your day off, you should really try it.  And when I say that you should try to do NOTHING, that’s exactly what I mean.  It is more therapeutic than you might thing, but the process of secluding yourself from outside influences for a short period of time, can be a great way to decompress from the workweek, and make yourself ready for family and/or friends.  It is also a great way to help you reflect on yourself.  Not thinking about work, schedules, or other responsibilities, but simply focusing on your current state of being.  (All hippie references aside, finding yourself at peace once a week is a wonderful salve for the scars that the world has inflicted.)

If you don’t know how you are going to do this whole “nothing” thing, may I suggest that you:

-Begin the day about 30 minutes later than you usually do. 

Studies have shown that sleeping in more than 30-45 minutes on your day off makes the next week much harder on you.

-Make sure you have discussed your “nothing” time with your spouse.

Your spouse should be your biggest advocate in this time, and should help to guard these few minutes each day by shielding you from possible “Nothingness Corrupters” like, children, phone calls, and music television…

-Get a large cup of your favorite breakfast beverage.

This is far more practical than you might think.  The consumption of a nice hot beverage in the morning can help you to begin the day, increase blood flow, and most importantly, drinking this beverage will help you to meter your “nothingness” time.  Not to long, not to short, just right…

-Find a quite place and meditate on how AWESOME our God is!

If there is any single thing that I have learned throughout this process, and throughout the few years I do have on this earth, it is that my God has never failed me.  Not once.  Not kind of.  Not a little bit.  Not at all.  He has always been there for me, and when I reflect on who he is, and what he has done for me, I am far more able to rejoice for the rest of the day.  NO devotion material!  No great sermons from great pastors! There is another time for all that.  
Simply bask in the glory that is our Wonderful God!!!

-When its over, its over…till next week.

Don’t dawdle, don’t start to plan your week out, don’t try to figure out how your neighbor got their lawn to look like that, and definitely don’t abuse the grace of your spouse who is probably waiting on you by now.  When the cup is empty, engage your family. 

There is nothing about this plan that is magic, not is there only one way to do nothing.  This is simply a way to start.  Make it your own.  Make it work for you and your family.  Make it happen.  In a few weeks, though, you will begin to ask yourself how you ever functioned without some time alone…and the truth probably is, you didn’t.