But it’s the same thing that supposedly makes my life more manageable, that creates so much grief. What I thought of as carefully crafted, turned out to be faulty in that I constantly forget one key obligation every week; personal time.

This concept of personal time becomes so foreign to us because we are constantly trying to uphold obligations. We feel as if we are doing things for ourselves by getting things accomplished, but things that are on our to-do list rarely involve things that we do because it is fun.

I call personal time an obligation. It is just as important as finishing that ten page paper, paying car insurance, or even eating. We owe it to ourselves, for all that we do, to take time out of our day to do something we can’t get enough of doing.

I didn’t realize this until my friend asked me, “What have you done for yourself today?” As I rattled off the numerous items that I had crossed off my list and mentioned going to work for added effect, he said I hadn’t answered the question. “Not what have you done today, what have you done for yourself today?”

Scanning my day planner and to-do list, I realize that they couldn’t help me. I had no answer for him. More importantly, I had no answer for myself. Why had I not been doing things for myself?

Growing up I danced, played several instruments, went to sporting events, watched movies or even took naps. And this was only a few years ago that I did all of these things. Now, I have a hard time recalling that last time that I did something that I truly enjoyed.

I know that I am not the only one suffering from this because I hear my roommates, classmates, and co-workers commiserating about the same thing, saying, “If there were only 25 hours in a day…”

Today I am challenging you to make that 25th hour a reality. Give yourself time everyday, even if it’s only ten minutes, to reconnect with something that you find pleasure in.

Pick up a new book, start knitting a scarf, watch some TV, go for a bike ride. Do something that you have always wanted to do. No one will give this 25th hour to you. You are going to have to create it for yourself.

My 25th hour is a kickboxing class that I started yesterday. It was an hour free from to-do lists, e-mails and phone calls. Of course, at the beginning of class there were a handful of things that I kept thinking that could have been done in that hour, but at the end I had no regrets.

For that one hour, I got to see who I was again. I relieved some stress and made new friends. My body was exhausted from the workout, but I was mentally and spiritually re-energized because I had taken time out of the day to remember someone very special; myself.

Start adding personal time to your to-do lists. It’s one of the best things that you can do for yourself. Don’t wish for a 25th hour, make it happen.

I knew that my roommate, a devout Christian, had a Bible of her own and rarely ever used anything else. When I asked her why she needed it, she told me that the campus pastor asked that she read a passage for the morning’s Chapel service and requested that she use the NRSV.

I didn’t understand what the difference really was whether my roommate used her own Bible or an NRSV, but she explained to me that our campus pastor wanted the NRSV because it was gender neutral and eliminated sexist language from our Chapel services. Words such as “brother” became phrases like “brother and sister”,”man” became “person” and God could be man and woman.

Thinking back to the past years, I couldn’t remember us being so firm about using the NRSV in our religious services. It could be that I just never paid that much attention to the version of the scripture that we were reading. But thinking back, there was a time this semester when we were all crowded in Chapel with our heads bowed and our hearts open and ready to pray when one of the student leaders opened his prayer with, “Dear Father and Mother God…”

It was as if a firecracker had gone off in the middle of service. What was a scene of serenity, quickly became a protest against the anti-sexist language used in the NRSV. Some of the most devout people I had ever met refused to continue prayer and sat down in their seats as they commented on how blasphemous the prayer was.

I didn’t grow up going to church as some of my other friends did. The knowledge of the Bible and God that I did have was handed down to me by both of my parents. My mother grew up Catholic and my father grew up Baptist. They had always learned and taught that God was a man and that the Bible was written the way it was supposed to be read, regardless of how sexist it seemed.

As someone growing in my own faith, with the foundation that was laid for me by my parents, I don’t know how I feel about this gender-neutral language. It changes the meaning that I had originally established of biblical texts.God to me is our Father. And I understand that when he says “sons”, that I, as a female, am included too.

Did God mean for us to change and interpret his word to fit into our own society or was that something we should have just been able to do in our own thought process? Why has the sudden need for society to be politically correct now affect my Bible?

I have always though myself as an open-minded person who could consider new ideas and theories. And for the most part, I am liberal in the way that I think. However, this is a concept that has been harder for me to grasp.

I think about how we are all made in God’s image, meaning that there has to be a female side of God since women exist. I now try to picture God as being a woman, but my instinct is to picture God as I always have: as a man.

We came across a fact about Columbus being arrested on one of his voyages and being sent back to Spain where he had originally started his trip. I was writing this fact on the board when one of my students named Jovonni called for my attention.

I thought that he had another fact to present to the rest of the group, yet he just looked at me and said that he didn’t really like the cops. I didn’t quite understand where he was going with this comment except that we had just talked about Columbus being arrested, something that I hardly felt that he would become so emotional about.

He told me, “I don’t like the cops because sometimes when they stop you, and if you don’t have the right documents, they will send you back where you came from.” I didn’t know what to say to him. I could feel that this comment was backed by some kind of experience that I didn’t know about, but I didn’t know how to ask him what had happened. “And sometimes it breaks up families.”

As I looked at Jovonni, I no longer saw a 12-year-old child. This comment somehow seemed to age him beyond his years. This was an issue that I personally felt that no one should have to be a part of, especially not a child.

I remember my high school Spanish teacher talking to us one day about immigration laws. It was around the time there was a huge immigration rally downtown Chicago, which would protest against the current law makers making it illegal for those who didn’t have the proper documents to stay in the States.

This was an issue I always felt passionate about. My own sentiments on the issue were that America was created by people who didn’t belong here in the first place and that this land never truly belonged to anyone besides the Native Americans. To me, a person can’t kick someone out of a country that doesn’t belong to them when they have no true rights to it either.

But how do you explain this to a child? There is so much more to the situation than just what he perceives. I had to weigh the situation carefully.

I told him that I didn’t like the fact that if people didn’t possess proper documentation, they ran the risk of being sent back to their country. I knew that he was mostly talking about the hispanic population that is present here in Goshen, IN, but I tried to generalize the subject so that he knew it happened to others as well, not that that made the situation any more acceptable to me. I also tried to convey the fact that not all police were out to have peoplep deported. They had to do their job of enforcing the law, and yes, there are times when people supercede their powers.

The main thing that I wanted Jovonni to know was that I understood where he was coming from and that he had a valid point, but at the same time, I wanted to teach him that there is always hope for changes in the future, and that he should weigh each situation individually.