Time: Nemesis or a Gift?

I've concluded that time is my nemesis. I looked it up and it fits me and my relationship with time to a T: "Something a person cannot conquer or achieve" or "an opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome."  No matter what I do...I feel like I'm always checking my watch or wishing I had left 10 minutes sooner or setting another clock ahead 5 minutes in an attempt to be "on time."  Story of my life. If I had a dollar for every time I've set a clock forward 5 minutes so  I could be on time, I could quit my job and start a non-profit organization. (see: exaggeration) But really, this happens a lot.

But really, where did this obsession with time come from? I feel if I could purchase an extra hour in the day, I would seriously consider it. But why...so I can accomplish more? So I can work even harder? So I can enjoy life more? I'm sure if my time increased my "to-do" list would as well.

This is eerily beginning to sound like the book of Ecclesiastes....maybe I will turn there for wisdom. (Before breaking out into "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrds...my dad would be proud!)

This stands out to me...

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man can’t find out the work that God has done from the beginning even to the end"  (3:11) I will not even pretend to really get the second part of that verse (I was tempted to just add an ellipses there after "hearts," but thought better. I know that the Bible is best read in context. And even a verse quoted is often sorely out of context. )  

And then there's the oft quoted Ecclesiastes vs. 1-8 which begins with "For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven."  


Time for me is a performance and a "recovering perfectionist" issue (some days I'm more recovering than others...some days I go on a "perfectionist binge" and then I think "What am I doing? This is not okay and not what I was made for." ) Time for me (in my flesh) is a chance to prove just how efficient, organized, and sadly, sometimes "Super Christian" I really can be. 


What if that's not what time is really about? What is time isn't about how many things I can cross of my list or how many projects I can fit in or how far I can get in a given amount of time? What if time is really just a grace gift? We're not guaranteed any certain amount of time on Earth (although I do know my time has no limits in heaven...can't quite wrap my brain around that one)


It's funny...on my snow days(and the blessed summer time) from school-you know, when time seems frozen (pardon the pun), time and I get along so much better.  Time and I are not enemies anymore...we're more like acquaintances or even neighbors who exchange recipes. I have time to turn around. And time to pee without worrying if I'll be late to pick up my kids from music. I say to myself at times that a "murphy's law" principle of time would be: "I'll use up whatever time I've given." And it's true. Whether i get up at 4:30 or 5:00 on a school day, I never look around looking for something to do as I get ready for my day-for that moment at 8:37 each morning when 20 little faces speed down the hallways (similar to the "running of the bulls in Spain" I'm convinced) whether I'm ready or not.  Without even realizing it, I am subconsciously making decisions about what is important and what is not as important in order to "use my time wisely." 


I look again at Ecclesiastes 3 vs. 1-8 and it seems  that "a time (to keep and a time to lose)" is speaking more in terms of seasonally in one's life. Not in a mathematical time sort of way ("you have 3 years, 5 months, and 2 days to keep this." ) 


I guess time really is a grace gift. We don't really know how much it's going to be or how long a certain season will last. And maybe the setting forward of my clocks so I'm not late places is a way I'm trying to cheat time. I guess I need to stop looking at time like an enemy to cheat or conquer, but a gift to receive.