Saying “No” Can Be a Positive Action

I’ve written a couple of posts quoting Anne Ortlund, on her book and on her ideas of stripping down our lives.  Sadly, she’s no longer with us, but her heritage lives on in her books.  (The first link is to her Amazon page.)  Today I was struggling (as usual) to get myself going on what I needed to do, and I was reminded of her idea that says,

​This is what life-planning is all about.  Under that wonderful umbrella of “if God wills,” we need to decide where we suspect he’d like us to go.  We need to see what provisions are necessary for each leg of the journey, and get them.  Then we need to say “no,” “no,” “no,” daily all the rest of our lives to . . .

everything that would get us off-course, and keep returning and returning to our personal charts to make sure we’re getting there! (52)

I just went back and re-read my previous posts on her ideas and I don’t find that I mentioned her reference to being on a ship, which is what she’s talking about when she says “personal charts” above.  So if you’re on a cruise, for example, you’ll get up every morning and put on your clothes and go to the dining room and eat your meals and spend your day, but you’re not in the same place you were yesterday.  The ship has moved on.  And if you haven’t made any plans or set any goals, if you don’t have the maps and charts that will keep you on course, then you’ll just drift.  As she says, all through the journey there are winds and cross-currents that will tend to shove the ship off course, and if the captain isn’t constantly “refocusing, redirecting, recentering,” then the destination will never be reached.  I love the idea of “returning and returning” to the right course, partly because that phrase makes allowance for the fact that we ​do get off course, and we can always get back on, God helping us.  There’s a real physicality to this whole image; I can feel the tug and turn as the captain pulls on the wheel to get the ship back on course.  So right now, I need to turn the wheel and finish this post (which is hard for me to do; I have a terrible tendency to go back and read, and re-read, and re-re-read my deathless prose), and go finally get the cleanup finished from last Friday’s reception​ , and get busy on the task list I have on my Google calendar page, and fix that chicken curry dish I want to make for dinner . . . you get the picture.  Where’s your ship going?  Is it on course, or do you need to say “no” to the thing that pulling on you?