My feet are moving but the finish line isn’t much closer

I’ve been studying for what seems like an interminable length of time, but I’m still left with far too few hours over the next few days to adequately prepare for finals.  The job is overwhelming; and even though I know that in a week it will all be behind me, I still wonder how long and short this week will turn out to be.  I’m struggling to stay on task, to not check facebook or clean my room (it hasn’t been this neat in months) or make cookies (but they are yummy) or read all of Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary.  This evening, I again strayed from the powerpoint on my computer to the much-more-enticing world of catching up on blogs and news that I don’t actually need to know right now (not when there are thousands of drugs just waiting for me to learn their side effects, at least!).  Sometimes God isn’t subtle.  At all.  The blog post title that I opened up?  “Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator”.  Ouch.  That’s me–I have my notes all spread out, my study plan scheduled, my to-do memo typed out in my palm.  I’ve always been busy–I say I’m never bored, and that’s really true. But my non-laziness manifested in busy procrastination is just as bad (or worse, because I like to think I’m ok just because I’m busy).

No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow. It is only when they are behind us and done, that we begin to find that there is a sweetness to be tasted afterwards, and that the remembrance of unwelcome duties unhesitatingly done is welcome and pleasant. Accomplished, they are full of blessing, and there is a smile on their faces as they leave us. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our tranquility, and hindering our communion with God. If there be lying before you any bit of work from which you shrink, go straight up to it, and do it at once. The only way to get rid of it is to do it.
-Alexander MacLaren (1826–1910), Scottish preacher

So, now to sleep, tomorrow to start anew, to rejoice in grace for busy procrastinating sinners, and, by a strength not my own, to stay on task and fill up my brain with knowledge of diseases and drugs.