Lassoes in the Wind

After forty-three years of hemming, hawing, running forward and dawdling back on my many projects, I am ready to concede one thing for sure: I am not a very good time manager. I get up every single (well, almost) day brimming with good intentions. Then, almost in time with the beeping of the coffee pot, my day rears back like a muscled-up stallion and off he goes, flying by me, out the door and into the wind. Before I know it, I am getting into bed, that familiar sense of sadness that I did not milk the glories of my day for all they were worth settling on me like the layer of dust on my dresser. I have each and EVERY hallmark of adult attention deficit disorder, only there were no therapies for that when I was a kid. No, therapy for me consisted of such rich and rewarding experiences as lining up with the rest of the class for one lick with a paddle by my fourth-grade teacher for errancy in homework, or enduring shock and horror at the state of my room, followed by exclamations of dire consequence should something meanful not be made of the muddle of clothes and the detritus of my starts and stops in life. I remember my little goldfish jumping out of her bowl because she was dern tired of the foggy water (okay, well, it was probably because in my ADD haze I filled the bowl too full). My entire life has been characterized by more organized folk shouting "WRITE IT DOWN!!!" Though I was able to accomplish quite a bit in my scholastic life, garnering both a scholarship and a graduate fellowship, I did these things on my own terms. While you worked, I slept. While you slept, I worked. I sipped coffee at odd hours. I lived for the last minute, an experience that jolted me (and still does) out of my torpor, revving my creative juices and basically scaring the stuffings out of me. I do like to please, so I am always at odds with myself. I am usually mad at me. Enough of this. I am asking for prayer. I am asking God to take the basics of who I am and form something more meaningful out of them. I would like some goals, especially with my writing, that are both attainable and worth doing. I would like to be a good housekeeper, but even as I write that the juvenile side of me shouts "Publish a book and hire someone to do that!!!" Please pray for me. I want to be more productive. My husband is always asking me to do mundane things for the family as I (in his words) "have more discretionary time" than anyone else here. He's right...but he doesn't know that I fill it running in circles, kind of like Pipsqueak, Jonathan's caramel-colored gerbil. It's like I recently told a friend, who said she was also ADD: "We can do what everyone else does, it is just that it takes TEN TIMES the effort!" She agreed, and we had a hallelujah meeting of the minds on the phone while I placed an order in the Burger King drive-thru. It was a beautiful thing. I am not asking for you to accept my excuses. Oh, no. I wouldn't be me if I did not have a grandiose dream hanging out there...I want to do better! If you love me, pray for me! The secret, I have found, to living for Christ (and those who live for Christ are productive), is to take life one day at a time. When that proves too much, take it an hour at a time. Heavens, I can do anything for an hour. Even scrub the toilets.