I’ve been learning a lot about myself this month. God keeps bringing up something in me that I’ve wrestled with my whole life.
Busyness.
I have been busy my whole life. When I was a little girl, every day my wonderful mother would run me all around town from school, to swim practice, to soccer/softball/basketball games, to outings with friends, to relatives’ houses, church activities, and the list goes on.
The busyness continued in high school. On week days I’d drag myself out of bed to swim practice before school, swim practice after school, social activities, and tons of homework. Weekends were filled with swim meets, activities with friends, family, church and youth group activities.
College was the busiest time of my life. Swimming 25+ hours a week, completing a double major and master’s degree in four years, participating in every campus ministry I could find, and living in a house with my closest friends left little time for sleeping, much less anything else.
When I graduated college, I still found myself trying to keep up with the obligations that would fill my plate. Working full time, maintaining close relationships with friends who live in Cincinnati, family gatherings, church activities, a dog, and a boyfriend, I was still busy.
As I pray about it, I realize that at the heart of busyness lies a bigger spiritual issue.
Striving.
It comes from feeling a need to do. A need to perform. A need to succeed. A need to earn.
Striving means “to exert oneself vigorously; try hard; to make strenuous efforts toward any goal.”
And this contradicts the Gospel.
God saved you by his grace when you believed.
And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.
Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done,
so none of us can boast about it.
–Ephesians 2:8-9
As Christians, we know that we can never earn our way to God. That no matter how hard we try, we can never be good enough to deserve to be with a holy, perfect and righteous God. That’s why we need Jesus. Jesus lived the holy, perfect, and righteous life that we couldn’t and died the death we deserved in our place so that we can share in His perfect righteousness and live forever with God.
We know this. This is what makes us Christians.
Yet this truth doesn’t always translate into our daily lives. We still strive. We still try to do more, to perform better, to succeed, to earn the things we want in life.
When the World Race came up, I found myself looking forward to a break from the busyness of my life. I saw it as a year where my only focus is loving Jesus, and growing closer to Him through serving His people around the world. A year with no obligations, no stress, no striving, no busyness.
But as I’ve found, especially during this month in Nicaragua, I’m still busy. I’ve found myself overwhelmed with our ministry schedule, team time, feedback, staying in touch with people at home, doing team finances, and all the other things that fill up my day.
So I’m realizing that my busyness has very little to do with my life circumstances, and everything to do with my heart posture.
My whole life, I have always felt a desire to spend time with God. From an early age, God blessed me with a craving for His Presence. The moments in my life where I feel most myself, most alive, are the times where I have been spending significant amounts of time alone with God on a regular basis, and so live in a place of connection with my Father. When I am in that place, I am free from the stress and pressures of everything I have to do, and I am free to be myself. But too often, I let busyness and striving rob me of that sweet time in His presence.
My teammates helped me process this this month. One day when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed with everything I had to do that day, Jenna called me out and said that I should tell the team how I’m feeling before I get to the point where I’m stressed and overwhelmed. That opened the way for a conversation about my life-long battle with busyness and how as an introvert, I need my alone time. I also shared how I always want to spend more time alone with God in the secret place, just me and Him, but that I always let my responsibilities and things I feel like I have to do take away from that time with Him.
My teammates’ responses were so encouraging. They affirmed my desire for alone time as a good thing, from the Lord, because that’s how He created me. They encouraged me that they benefit from my desire for more of God, because it challenges them to pursue more of Him for themselves. And they encouraged me to take the time I need to keep seeking God in that way. Their words of affirmation and encouragement sunk so deep into my heart that it brought me to tears. I had been denying myself the alone time I need in order to be as engaged on the Race as possible. I’ve given in to the pressure to always be as present as possible every second of every day. But in that conversation, my teammates were giving me permission to be myself, setting me free from the unnecessary burdens that I feel to strive and to do more. They reminded me that Jesus has set me free from the need to do, so I can just be.
Since that conversation, things have been different. I was encouraged to make my daily personal time with the Lord a priority, so I started waking up an hour earlier to make sure that I get that time. I also now feel a freedom to not partake of every activity going on, if instead I feel the need to withdraw and get recharged. And I feel much better.
When I was talking to Tony about all this on FaceTime, he gave me a really great analogy. He compared us to cell phones. We have the capability to do lots of useful things, but after so long, we need to be plugged in and recharged. Sometimes God gives us a lot of things to do, things that are too much for us to do on our own. But our time spent in His presence recharges us, so that we have the energy to do what we need to do. Sometimes we feel completely run down, like our battery is dead, but we still have things that we need to do. In those times, we can turn to God in the midst of the busyness in order to receive the energy we need. That’s living life plugged in, charging while we’re being used.
So I’m learning to pay attention to the state of my heart. I’m learning that it’s ok to be myself. I’m learning that it’s ok to do the things I need to do to be spiritually healthy. I’m learning that it’s necessary for me to pull away and take the time I need to get filled up so I can love people better. And I’m learning how to practice that on a daily basis. I’m learning how to stay connected to God in the midst of busyness.
I’m learning that it’s not about doing.
It’s about being.
