What Keeps You Awake Tonight?

I know what keeps me awake tonight.

Taking pictures, caffeinated coffee, the desire to relax before falling asleep, the horror of 7 plus hours of lectures watched at 1.5x speed, a test only 40% done after working on it for 15 hours in two days, the frustrations of wanting to know but having no clue.  There are other things too, added on top of the test nightmares of this weekend… like the physical state of my house, the financial standing of my family, the desire to be involved in a million things but having to limit myself only to the essentials.

But how do I figure out what the essential things are?  This has been the long-standing question of my life.  Even in middle school, my interests and passions were so wide in variety, and there was never enough time in the day.

I have come to the realization that there are a lot of things in my life that I just need to make time for and then everything else will fall into place.  I remember a presentation at my protestant church years back, where the women’s ministry leader demonstrated how to fit God into a person’s life.  She had this huge jar that she dumped little marbles into it (these represented the everyday things, like responsibilities and entertainment) and then tried to add larger marbles to the jar (these represented time with God).  The large marbles wouldn’t fit.  Instead, she reversed the order, first dropping God into the jar, and then the everyday things.  The little marbles filled in the gaps between the large marbles, and everything fit into the jar.

It’s just like this post I read the other day at the blog called Let’s Go Then, You and I… titled It’s All In The Start.  The author described how she would love to start the day, on her knees spending time with God, but the difficulty of getting out of the warm bed prevented her.  She goes on to describe the difficulty of the day, how everything just becomes so overwhelming, and she came to the conclusion that it is all in how she starts off her day, in idleness or in worship.

Perhaps those things that keep me awake tonight would not be so big if I re-arranged my life a little to be centered first on Christ.  Perhaps if I got up a little earlier, started my day with God, and then moved onto the everyday things, then maybe the stress of life would not be so overwhelming.  Maybe then the peace of God would settle into my soul, and I would have the courage to face whatever life throws at me.

How about you?  What keeps you awake at night?