Day 30 - 1999 Planning Calendar (Throw ... after a walk down memory lane)

It was my first full time pastoral job after graduating from Asbury Theological Seminary.  January 7th, 1999, I spent moving into the parsonage for the little United Methodist Church in Marietta, Indiana.  I was dating a girl named Kelli who lived in Indianapolis and she had just talked me into adopting one of her friend's accidental puppies.  She told me the pups were a "bull terrier" mix ("the mother is a bull terrier, the father is a fence jumper").  I adopted one of the cute little females, named her Tux (short for Tuxedo, because of her coloring), got her settled in to life in the parsonage, and then ... promptly got dumped by Kelli.  Not long after the dumping, I was telling a friend that I had this new puppy that was a bull terrier mix and my friend was shocked: "You got a pit bull??!" 

"No," I said naively, "a bull terrier."

"Same thing," he replied.

1999 didn't start off too well.

But it turned out great.  By the following New Year's Eve I had met the woman who would become my wife.  And Tux was dead.  (Long story... and it's not what I'm writing about tonight.  Just know that everyone was better off!)

So tonight I flipped through this calendar from 1999 and a couple of things struck me:

1)  I started the year keeping track of what was happening each day.  The first month has notes on just about every day with information about meetings and phone calls and errands.  The notes become more sporadic in February.  They disappear almost entirely by mid-March.  After that, only really big events are noted - like directing a church camp in June or attending the "Share Jesus" week in Jacksonville, Florida in July.  This has been my pattern with journaling in the past - start strong and then quickly lose the habit.  I have a lot of little notebooks around the house, on bookshelves and in drawers, with anywhere from 2 to 10 pages of writing followed by dozens upon dozens of blank pages.  When I was in Haiti, I started a new journal and wrote 57 pages during the course of the week.  And I've pretty much kept it up ever since.  Now this blog serves as my journal and I'm loving the discipline and the challenge of it.  I believe it's safe to say I have firmly established this as a habit - and I intend to make it a lifelong habit.

2)  There are names and events listed in this 1999 planner that are completely lost to my memory!  Honestly, until I saw the note about taking something to Kelli in Indianapolis, I had completely forgotten her name.  (It's true, Melissa, it's true!  You have made me forget about all the rest.)  [I know Melissa will read this - might as well take the opportunity to score some bonus points!]  If I don't write things down, I forget them.  One of my biggest regrets as a parent is that I have not captured even 1% of all the goofy, sweet, cute, profound or perplexing things my kids have said over the years.

3)  Maybe the reason I have forgotten so many of these events in my life isn't just because I didn't write them down.  Maybe I have forgotten them because so many of them just didn't matter that much.  (Note from February 7, 1999 - "12:30 Skating - meet @ parsonage (w/van)" )  I'm 42 years old now.  There was a time when I felt like I had all the time in the world ahead of me - plenty of time to squander.  The brevity of life is becoming more of a reality with each passing day.  With whatever calendar years still lie ahead of me, I want to accomplish important things, lasting things ... eternal things.  I want to do God's work.