Guest post by Ryan Borowicz
I’m looking out my window here in beautiful, mushy, NE Wisconsin during a season of anticipation, both personally and professionally. Here is a list of the things I’m anticipating, in no particular order:
- My next meal. I’m in the middle of a five day nutritional cleanse in which you don’t eat anything for five days. Bad idea.
- The steelhead season. In a week or two, migratory rainbow trout from Lake Michigan will make their way up the tributary rivers and hopefully find the fly on the end of my line.
- Health. I’m trying to recover from an abdominal muscle pull that has sidelined me from basically any exercise for the past month.
- Warm weather. My kids (3 and 1) are going crazy having been couped up in the house basically since November. Mom and Dad are going crazy too!
- Our summer ministry season. Most of our activity is condensed between the months of June through September, easily my favorite time of the year.
- Our building expansion. We are meeting with builders and architects and will take a pledge in October. Best case scenario is building this time next year!
- Growth in my relationship with my wife. We’ve been married for seven years now, but we are continually learning about each other’s needs.
- Growth in my faith. We all have peaks and valleys, and I’m in a valley. I was reminded today to “Draw near to Him and he will draw near to you.”
- The NCAA basketball tournament. Nothing more needs to be said about that.
It’s great to anticipate things in life and work. It keeps us moving forward when we are stuck in a rut. But sometimes we can anticipate too much and forget what is on our plate today (well…actually…nothing is on my plate today. Dang…bad metaphor). This cleanse has been tough, but it has actually caused me to really slow down and just think about the moment. If I think ahead to Saturday morning when I can eat again, I get too hungry, my brain stops working, and nothing gets done. But by staying in the moment, it has caused me to really focus on what I need to do here at work (tying up a bunch of loose ends that I’ve been putting off) and at home (realizing I need to give my kids my full attention and not be checking my blackberry for emails every five seconds).
Being involved in Sports Ministry means that we all have something coming up on our calendars to anticipate, but I want to encourage you to not forget about what’s in front of you right now. We need to strike a good balance between being nearsighted AND farsighted. Between anticipating and just being in the now.
