Kelly Cefalu's Blog
How to find the motivation / 02.08.10, 11:29 PM
I have not blogged in a long time. I have been distracted and tired and sort of waiting for something profound to write about. But this will have to do.
As the second trimester of Mission year began (I can’t quite say it is beginning still because we have been here for a month now), we talked a lot about the fact that this trimester is a long one. The newness has worn off, there is no big light at the end of the tunnel yet (no long break or summer/end of the year excitement). There is just us, me and the 5 people I live with. Just us living in our neighborhood, working all week and sleeping all Sabbath. There is just us and cold, dreary winter weather (I am definitely not in Sunnyvale anymore). How do we find motivation? How we we remember why we are here when we are tired and annoyed with our team mates and sick? (right now I feel pretty crappy with a headache and a cold, and please note that I am often very happy and excited to be here and in love with my team… but not always).
I have found the answer to this question of motivation in sometimes the most obvious places, and other times the answer has found me when I least expected it.
Part of the answer has been learning to be motivated and energized by small moments of joy and love. Last week I showed the kids how to make bug catchers and we ran around a park at the afterschool program hunting for spiders and bugs. It was awesome. Recently I have had some late night convos with a team mate who, at the beginning of the year, I would have never thought we would get along. I am amazed in those moments of what God can do and why I decided to participate in a community that I had no say in choosing. Sometimes it is as simple as a smile from a child, a really good breakfast, a good hair day, or an encouraging text message from a friend. We do not often get those big, mountain top moments but we do often get whispers of peace and moments of joy in a busy day.
Another part of the answer has been in the quiet moments I have with my Savior when He meets me in the midst of my exhaustion and frustration. Last Wednesday I felt sick and tired and frustrated and cold. I had tried to have a quiet time in the morning but it felt unproductive. Then I opened up a book my friend had let me borrow several months ago, but I hadn’t opened it since last year. One of the first things I read was this:
“My hour in the Carmelite chapel is more important that I can fully know myself. It is not an hour of deep prayer, nor a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries. I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and showing him all that I feel, think, sense, and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him.” (Henri Nouwen, )
I read this and thought really? It’s ok that I don’t have intense times of prayer and that I’m distracted and tired and everything else while I’m trying to be with God? It’s ok that I’m just me? At some point along this journey of faith someone told me (or I gathered from some source) that “quiet times” were required every day and I should read the Bible and pray and think of only “holy’” things. This would make me a good Christian. And I’m on Mission Year… I have to be a good Christian (really, somewhere in my psyche I believed this). Especially if I’m a team leader. Maybe everyone else already figured this out, but I needed to hear that message from Henri Nouwen. He writes later “God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart.” If I were to try to be anything but exactly what I am when I come to meet God, I would be a fool. And who I am is God’s beloved daughter, wreck that I am.
This realization has allowed me to be more honest with God. And in that honesty I find great peace, which brings me back to answering the question: How to stay motivated? This freedom to find Joy and Love in the small things and to find Peace in just being myself has helped me stay motivated. It helps me to not just get through the day, but to see God work in me and those around me through the day. And that, I believe, is why I’m here, on Earth, in East Point.
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This encouraged my heart, Kelly. Thank you for writing!
By Sarah Quezada / Feb 9, 01:32 PM / #
kelly, this was really encouraging. thanks!
By kirsten / Feb 9, 02:01 PM / #
mmm something to ponder today. thank you.
By meredith / Feb 16, 10:55 AM / #