Hey folks! Sorry I missed last week. I spent most of the past week and a half in bed sick. Ridiculous how a cold can just lay me low at this point in my life/where my immune system is at.
Do you ever feel like the week just sped by? I frequently do! I can’t believe that it’s OCTOBER–OCTOBER! My oldest daughter just turned ten–also a shock to my system 🙂 Time flies, doesn’t it?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how being busy makes the time speed by like nobody’s business. When you’re busy, you just go through one day and the next and the next. There’s no time for extra things in your life (at least that’s how my life goes!).
This week my kids and I were talking about how people learn. Brain science is fascinating to me. Did you know that you can’t learn new skills if you’re in fight or flight mode? We’re hardwired to be unable to learn when we’re in survival mode. What puts a person in survival mode? Lots of things–anything that stresses them emotionally or physically. We need safe space in order to learn.
What does that have to do with being busy? Everything. If we’re busy, we don’t have that space unless we intentionally schedule it into our days. I don’t know about you, but some days I feel too busy to even catch my breath, as though if I slow down for a second, the rest of my day will collapse in a pile of unaccomplished tasks. My husband and I were recently talking about some changes we want to implement and trying to figure out when we have time to actually implement them.
I’ve recently become convicted that that level of busy-ness means that I don’t have space in my life for growing. Since becoming stagnant is my worst fear, this is a big deal to me. The sad thing is that, in our go-go-go society, being busy is almost unavoidable. So what can we do? How do we keep from waking up one day and realizing years have gone by without us growing?
I think one major thing is to create space in our days and weeks. My husband and I try to fit in a Sabbath every week. I personally love this practice. I was just reading a couple of entrepreneur books and listening to them talk about how key it is to work EVERY single day made me sad for the authors. I actually grew up with that work 7 days a week mentality but have since been convinced of the benefit of taking a Sabbath. It’s one of the things I do that remind me who is really in charge of making my life work–like going to bed at a reasonable time (Ps. 127:2) or tithing.
I also have a daily quiet time–something I think I would go insane without. I do prayer and Bible study and read back through my journal to remind myself of the things God’s been teaching me lately, but I also have time to just think and listen.
The other thing I’ve been working on is making sure I’m busy with the right things. James Clear describes the difference between motion and action: “Motion is when you’re busy doing something, but that task will never produce an outcome by itself… Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will get you a result.” It’s kind of the difference between getting caught up in doilies and dishes and being intentional about the things God has called us to do. There’s a kind of space that comes just from being who God designed us to be, a freedom that’s found in doing the things He’s called us to do.
So how about you? Do you have space in your life for growth or are you too busy to change? How do you keep space in your life (or put it back in)?
