If you know me, you may have heard me suggest, “If you don’t have 5 minutes, then you need to take 60.”
While I looked puzzlingly at my friend when she first shared this mantra with me years ago, after spending time evaluating my not-so-balanced-or-joyfilled life, it hit me like a ton of bricks: my priorities were out of whack.
You see, I love to be busy, in fact, I am borderline obsessed with it, actually.
I love to feel productive. Even more so, I love the thrill of taking my multicolored highlighters and checking my 20+ accomplished tasks off of my checklist every day. (You may be happy to know that while I still make daily checklists, I have graduated from putting items such as “get up” and “go to bed” on the list–don’t judge me.)
And I love all things related to busyness and order: closet and drawer organizers, day planners, my Google calendar, and multi-colored varied-sized post-it notes, and don’t even get me started on electronic label makers. Sheer joy on this side of heaven.
But, in the midst of an extremely “busy” phase of life, my very dear friend Laura helped me recognize my busyness as a way of validating and proving my worth. The busier I was, the more important I was–or so I thought.
With this newfound realization, I was humbled and redirected to stop, slow down, and listen.
In the silence, I realized that while food was once my vice of choice to get filled up, I simply transferred the desire for acceptance and worthiness in an outward expression of what the world deems as success. But during that time of solitude, I also heard God just asking me to slow down so that I could spend time with Him.
The rest is history.
Is any of this sounding familiar to you, sunshine?
Do you use the excuses: “I am so busy” or “I just don’t have time”?
If so, I encourage you to take five minutes to slow down and be still, soaking up what God wants to share with you.
And if you don’t have 5, then you need to take 60.
With love,
Frannie