Not necessarily managing my time or running late, but there just wasn't enough hours in the day. I know that anyone reading this has felt like this at some point or another. I would wake up and almost instantly get in a bad mood when I would start to "plan" my day. It was really affecting me. So I started working out thinking I needed a stress reliever. Well that only made things worse. Although I feel great physically, it was just another thing to do in my day and one more thing added to the calendar. Anyhow, time has been getting the best of me.
SO, I started this online bible study based on this book by Ann Voskamp.
My sister asked me to do it with her and relunctly I accepted another item on my ever growing to do list. You may be thinking I need to learn how to say "no" and you could be right. However, last week I read chapter 4, and the answer to this problem was staring me right in the face. So I wanted to share with you with some excerpts from the book and this partiular chapter, chapter 4 'A Sanctuary of Time'
"Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respector of no one. From the time the alarm rings and I stir on our pillows touching, stretch over his bare back and check those relenetless hands keeping time on that clock. The time, always the time, I'm an amateur tring to beat the time...We race. The barn...and hurry. The breakfast....and hurry. The books, the binders...and hurry. In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear. I have done it. I do it still. Hands of the clock whip hard. So I push hard and bark hard and I fall hard and when their wide eyes brim sadness and thier chins tremble weak, I am weary and I am the thin clear skin, reflecting their fatigue, about to burst, my eyes glistening their same sheer pain."
{A little side note, so some of the above makes since, Ann Voskamp is married to a farmer and they have 6 children. }I can't tell you how the above excerpt hit home for me. I have been noticing my patience dwindling faster than usual at my kids and always always when we were pressed for time.
"The hurry makes us hurt...They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life, And if I want the fullest of life, I need to find the time...I don't really want more time, I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You the glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done...I just want time to do my one life well"
How many of you are shouting "Amen" right now!?!? I know I am. :) She continues...
"In Christ, don't we have everlasting existance? Don't Christians have all the time in eternity, life everlasting? If Christians run out of time - wouldn't we lose our very own existance? If anyone should have time, isn't it the Christ-followers?"
Okay, that does make sense!
"When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment"
I know, I know. We have all hear this a million times from one another, in songs, poems, books, etc...But here is the rest of the answer and my aha moment...
"[the present] This is where God is. In the present. I AM - His very name...I AM so full of the weight of the present that time's river slows to a still...and God himself is timeless."
WOW! I can't tell you how powerful those words were and are to me.
"Giving thanks...is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with weight of full attention. Thanks makes now a sanctuary...Thank God for the time, and very God enter that time, presence hallowing it. True, this, full attention slows time and I live the full moment, right to outer adges. I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In HIS embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still...and holy."
This struggle that I had been dealing had such an easy simple answer...Enjoy and relish in the present, the only time I have. Notice the smallest of things and give thanks to Him for every bit of it! By the way, thats the premise of the book, hence the title...One Thousand Gifts. I highly recommend getting a copy for yourself and taking part in her same journey! I am very much enjoying the book and journey myself.
Anyhow, I'm off to lay down with these sweet girls of mine...and giving thanks for sunny afternoon naps!!
Wonderful post. Thanks for sharing!! sounds like a great book.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book MM! I definitely need to slow down and say thanks for the many blessings in my life too.
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