Henry Cloud was the speaker today on my iPod during the morning workout. He is a prolific author, fantastic speaker and very deep spiritually. His new book, Necessary Endings, discusses signals and times when you need to call an end to something (relationship, job, career, and so on). Although today he talked about recognizing when it doesn’t have to end.
One thing he discussed which really stuck is the need for structure in your life. My daughter is a therapist who works with troubled adolescents. One thing that is constant in her clients is that they grew up in a family without structure. Even if there were a “traditional” mom and dad, their lives were not structured. My wife taught elementary school. The biggest change she saw over the years (aside from lack of parental support) was the lack of structure in her students’ lives.
By this I mean no regular meal times, no regular study times, no regular bed times. We all need to organize our lives so that we don’t have to think about these things and then we are free to concentrate on our work, our relationships, our hobbies, on God.
If you stop by regularly or subscribe, you’ll notice that I am absolutely terrible about posting regularly. This is partly due to the fact that I travel a lot. When I travel, my life has little structure. I may have breakfast meetings, then meetings all day, then dinner with customers, then return to my hotel room late facing an email inbox of 300 messages to sort through.
That sure sounds like an excuse…a poor one. And you’d be correct calling me on that. One reason I’m preparing to teach a course on spiritual disciplines is that I need to remind myself to continually work to develop them.
Where do you need to put some structure in your life so that you then have freedom to get closer to God and to others? Must be time for us all to get to work.
Faith Venture 
Leave a comment