Defragging Your Life

This works for me, and it may work for you. Here goes.

In one of the hardest seasons of my life—the second half of 2014—God taught me something: there is always enough time to do everything God wants us to do. But for those with really busy lives it can seem impossible. This is where the principle of defragging comes in.

That wonderful compendium of all things information, Wikipedia, describes defragmentation thus: “In the maintenance of file systems, defragmentation is a process that reduces the degree of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contiguous regions.”

How may we apply this common information technology term to our everyday lives?

Defragmentation is essentially about noticing where those fragments of wasted life are, and re-organising present and future life such that those wasted regions no longer exist. This is not about doing more. This is about doing less. It’s about identifying the phenomena of moments that have least meaning and replacing those moments with phenomena packed with meaning, therefore purpose, hence life!

Let’s unpack (pardon the pun!) what this means in terms of time, busyness, efficiency and effectiveness.

I believe that God ordains the moment, and that each moment can be discerned to know exactly what is good to do each moment. Sure, there are many good things to do any moment. Given exactly the same kind of opportunity, you wouldn’t do what I would do, but both of us might do the right kind of thing, which just means there are endless options in the economy of God’s will. Such is the mystery of life that many roads lead from benevolence to blessing, just as many roads lead from malevolence to maelstroms.

The period from about July to December 2014 was a pandemic of attack. Actually, it abated before the end of the year, but because we were still grieving the loss of Nathanael, let’s just call it six months. The season was unprecedented before and since for the sheer unabating series of moves of the enemy to thwart us. I know it can sound like some fancy and prideful exaggeration, but the things that happened, when they happened, and the way they happened, were just too off the wall not to be from spiritual warfare. But at every step God proved to be our very present Guide and Light. All through this season we had mentors helping us, and we needed their help, such was the uncharted nature of the ambiguous loss we encountered in tandem with a direct hit that was coming to my professional identity—stabbed in the heart at the same time as my heart was being ripped out. A real and regular double-whammy. But that wasn’t the extent of it. There was at least one other major factor. It will take a momentous period to shift October 2014 off the mantle as the most memorable and taxing month of my life.

Why do I share this in the context of ‘defragging your life’? Simply for the fact that the principle bore witness during this time; as I said ‘yes’ to God, within each and every decision brought to my consciousness, to act as the Lord’s agent, I was both aware of the divine presence and the presence of attack. I truly felt, it was one thing after another, after another, after another, and that I had just enough time to do everything that God wanted me to do in that season. I couldn’t have done each and every one of those things without relying so heavily on God, and my reliance was heavy because of grief and stress. I didn’t have the self-assurance to resist.

It was like my life was absolutely defragmented in that period. Not a moment wasted. Good sleep due to frequent exhaustion. Good movement due to the knowledge I had to be well. Good use of time due to the fact we were living a time bomb—our son would grow to term and be born to die. Good courage in the mode of confounding conflict beyond my control that eventually, like Nathanael’s gestation, became a runaway train with wreckage strewn everywhere. There wasn’t a choice but to make the very most of each moment. And in a very real way, there wasn’t the space to grieve. I just had to keep going.

Nowadays I recognise that I’ve carried that life forward; that there is simply a mountain of blessing in making the most of the time (a la Ephesians 5:15-17). By making every moment count, to act, to rescind, to rest, to reflect, to relate, and to ponder the universe and the ways of God is a defragmented life.

Certainly, in the period that was June 2016 to earlier this year, God propounded one word in retrospect: “Sow!” In faith, because for a very long time my life was lamentable professionally. And I guess I’m like most men, you hit me in what I do, and you hit me in who I am—surely a weakness of identity, but it is what it is. Yet, I kept sowing, by saying, “God, I’ll serve wherever I can.”

A defragmented life is a life whereby we have no further room for the activities that chase our lives away to death. No more addictions. No more spurious secrets waiting for embarrassing exposure. No more lies. No more compromises of integrity, but a life lived before the witness of the angels of heaven. Sound fanciful? I’m just too young to not give it everything, and too old to care what people think anymore. But, gee, it took a long while to get there.

God ordains sleep and rest, good diet, self-respect, honesty at every turn even when it hurts, courage in our interactions, and the preservation and enhancement of health. Where we say ‘yes’ to a defragmented life, God comes through and gives it to us.