10,080 minutes

I went to bed last night at 9:30.

I just woke up... it is almost 9:30. AM.

Granted, I just got back from a long planet wisdom weekend and a one hour time zone change (As if this means anything! It totally annoys me when other people use the time zone as an excuse for being tired, but dangit, it sounds so legitimate!) still, twelve hours of sleep? 12?

I am lucky I did not die. I read once in one of my many women's health and fitness magazines, (aka: fear tactics and worry propaganda books paid for by our friendly pharmaceutical and beauty supply giants) that if you get more than eight hours of sleep, you are practically begging to die. Maybe they were just talking to the people who get twelve hours of sleep every night, all the same, I woke up this morning feeling like I narrowly escaped death.

I also felt like a mummy. I was oddly tangled up and trapped in my sheets and blankets, my sweatshirt was somehow on backwards and was choking me, my hair band was caught in the backboard of the bed so I couldn't move, I was sore from my brutal workout yesterday, and to top it off, I was tingly. You know how your feet and fingers and calf muscles feel tingly and at first it feels sort of cool and then you try to walk on it and you fall, and then it doesn't go away and at some point it feels sort of scary..."what if these tingles don't go away???" Like those people who get chronic hiccups and have them for months or years.

Anyways, I woke up with a complete set of body tingles that didn't go away for a terrifying three minutes or so, feeling like a mummy trapped in the blankets, relieved that the 12 hours of sleep didn't do me in, and finally, I woke up to another cloudy, rainy, dark Texas day.

Weird start to my morning. Ok, to my week. Because if Monday sets the tone, I might be in trouble.

Now I am sitting on my couch, in the darkness, thinkwriting. Which is where I just write what I am thinking with no forethought. That is my own word. Don't steal it. Someone asked me this weekend..."so what do you during the week when you are not doing shows?" Though this was just a normal question intended to draw a normal response out of me, it was perplexing.

What do I do during the week? What do I do? Do I do anything?

It is sometimes comical when we start to evaluate our lives.

"Well," I told her, "I'm a blogger. I blog. I go to Starbucks and read a lot. Have lunch with my dad once a week. Try to call my sisters and mom and schedule times to hang out. Clean the house. Get groceries and cook. Try to email people back. Rest my voice and take random jobs from time to time. And mostly I just try to stay outside and be in the sun because I feel like I am part bug and part beach, I just need to be in the sun."

The words narrowly escaped before I felt absolutely ridiculous. Like I am on a Club Med vacation for 4 days of the week. Part bug? Part Beach? Part caterpillar? (That's the bug I was thinking about) Who says that? Starbucks and a strong focus on my social calendar? What kind of lazy, beach bum, butterfly lovin' person am I? And then it happened.

The moment of panic...Oh my gosh, what am I doing with my life? What is my purpose? What do I do during the week?

I am over it now. I rest my body and my voice during the week so I can lead worship, perform, meet people, and pour into others for 72 hours straight. I see my family and go to church and get things done around the house so that I stay connected to my roots, my friends, and my support system and so that I can leave the millionth hotel and come home to a place that actually feels like home. I know those things about myself. I have to have them to fulfill my purpose. And I know my purpose.

But sometimes we forget what our purpose is. We panic. We wonder what in the world we are doing with our lives. And as we voice it out loud it seems comical, like a Club Med vacation, or whatever your life sounds like. A funeral. A circus. A race. A rat race. A boring library. A self-indulgent party. An exhausting, never ending story. Fill in the blank.

It's in that moment, the moment of panic or disgust, that we have the choice to turn a blind eye to truth and reality and keep going or we can slow down and look at our lives and evaluate. Am I missing something? Are my moments in vain? Are they worth anything? Am I living for something or someone beyond just myself? What is my purpose as a...mom, dad, friend, Christian, co-worker, and do I really care about that? What am I doing with my life???

To honestly approach that question is not always fun. But it is always worth it. At the end of the day I want to know that I started off a Monday and made it all the way to the next Monday not with ten thousand wasted, meaningless, self-indulgent, crazy, hurried, blank, empty minutes in between...but that I made it with some of those minutes meaning something.

I thought about her question and I woke up this morning thinking about my week. What will I do with it? Will it mean anything? Will it intersect with the lives of others? Will it add anything to the world around me? Or will it slip away from me? One Monday to the next.

This week I am choosing to be acutely aware of my life, of my moments, and of my time. You can join me if you want. I am declaring this..."What the Heck do I do During the Week" week. Because we can blindly be dragged through life, or we can choose to stop, evaluate ourselves, correct our course a bit, and actually do something with the moments we've been given.

At least for one week, I want to give it my best effort....