Call Me Irresponsible

Irresponsibly Mad for God

It's a funny thing, that word responsibility.  There's a good chance that I'll use it again, and often. I created a strengths finder profile some time ago, and my number one most obvious strength came back as responsibility.  God created me to be responsible.  According to strengths finder, this pretty much means that  I believe in the idea that honesty is the best policy - if I promise something, I believe in fulfilling that promise.  It gets me into trouble, sometimes, because responsibilities can and often do, conflict with one another.

Imagine promising to deliver a project on time to your supervisor.  Now, also imagine promising to your family that you will take more time to spend quality time with them.  Uh oh... here comes a potential conflict. If the project timeline starts to slip, do you give up time with your family?  But, then, family should rank higher than work in order of importance, shouldn't it?  Like I said, responsibility can get me into trouble. I believe that I have to earn the trust of those around me, but the most important trust I have to earn belongs to God.  He provides me with challenges, which in truth, are opportunities to prove that I deserve the responsibility he gives me.

Responsibility given by God sometimes provides interesting and challenging barriers, some of which put me into positions that are counter to the idea that I am, first and foremost, responsible.  I trust that God made me the kind of soul worthy the responsibility he gives me, even when I do screw it up sometimes.  I know I'm only human. And, sometimes when I'm trying to be a responsible steward in some cases, it makes me irresponsible in others.  I'm still actively learning how to prioritize my responsibilities.  I'm also still learning how to shut my mouth and open my ears so that God can help me put first things first.  I can even say that I've made some serious mistakes recently, counter to the core of my responsible being.  I've been irresponsible recently (though, not lately) and I intend on spending time reflecting and working on earning the trust of those I hurt, and also showing God that I am the responsible person He made me and wants me to be.

So, I have some things that I need to be more responsible for, and I have some things that I need to move away from, because it would actually be the responsible thing to do.  With God's help, the next few posts I write will actively concentrate on several things:

1. Putting God in first place in my life - Being a better Christian
2. Putting my wife in second place in my life - Being a better Husband
3. Putting my daughter in third place in my life - Being a better Father
4. Learning to trust others, and myself, with my professional quality at work - Being a better Employee

As I continue down the path to being more responsible for these things, I thank God that he will offer me enlightenment as I work on them.  I also ask Him to help me make my journey a successful one, because there are times when I will fall. He knows that I fell hard recently, and He knows I have a long way to go in rebuilding some broken trust. But, He also knows that I'm seriously committed to working on it, and for the fact that he gave me a heart committed to being responsible - I am certainly thankful.