All too often life decides to throw everything at you at once. And usually, when that happens, it means that something will be neglected. Something will be put to the backburner so that everything else can be accomplished. My entire life I have never been very good at saying no. Now, my mom may beg to differ that my favorite childhood words were “no” & “can’t”, but I’m not really talking about that tiny feisty side of me that doesn’t like to be bossed around. I’m talking about the side of me that wants to do all the things, all the time, and as perfectly as possible. After all, if you commit to something, you need to be the best at it, right?
I’ve always been the girl with a ton of commitments, a mound of organizations & clubs, and multiple social circles. For as long as I can remember, I’ve juggled everything from sun up to sun down, for fear that I might miss out if I ever said no. Don’t get me wrong, my schedule was filled to the brim with things I loved to do, but there comes a point when there are only so many hours in the day. I remember in college that I would literally plan out every hour of my day in order to cram the most in each day – especially during finals – so that I could do everything anyone asked me to do. Coffee with a friend offered at the same time as a walk offered from another? Why pick when you can shift the slots and do both? Taking 17 hours of classes but still need some spending money? Sprint from class to work to maximize your time & get a short workout in. I was a girl obsessed. Or as people politely liked to label me: involved. These days there seems to even be a hashtag for what I was feeling: #fomo = fear of missing out. I just can’t even. Are we so afraid of missing out as a culture that we have to slap a hashtag on it and blast it across social media? Of course we do. I digress…
Until I got out into the “real world” I could operate on zero sleep, lots of coffee, and constant movement. It wasn’t really until about 6 months ago that I started feeling almost completely overwhelmed. I had moved from being constantly busy to being completely hurried. I have touched on being hurried before when speaking about meditation, however I’m not even sure it resonated with me then as much as it has recently. The contrast in being busy & attempting to make time for the commitments that need to be taken care of and taking a moment to be still & recognize His goodness is being busy. Being hurried is checking off the to do list in a hasty manner and never fully being still. Never being able to be at peace when the list remains untouched. Or the laundry still needs to be done. Or everything falls on the same day. And this is where I had landed. Full blown hurry and lacking peace in just about everything. Always rushing from one thing to the next. and finding myself apologizing more than ever for being tired, forgetful, and downright unpleasant sometimes.
When my husband finally said something that made me realize perhaps I was a bit overloaded, the Lord began to reveal to me that not only was I hurried, I hadn’t been listening to Him at all. Once my ears finally opened, I heard a resounding consensus of “let it go” – and no, not the Frozen song, though I feel quite assured it likely rang in my head as well during this time. But an urgency to declutter. A pull to step back and cut loose the extraneous items from my life that didn’t need to fill the space in my schedule or my home. One Sunday, our contemporary pastor said the quote above and it rocked me to my core. He was in the middle of a church wide series called Soul Keeping (which you should check out – both Nathan & Brian’s sermons – they each bring so much truth and depth to the Word each week) and it was like a ton of bricks. “Hurry is the great enemy of soul. Busy is a condition of our outer world; being hurried is a problem of the soul.” And in that moment I knew something had to change. I slowly began to survey my life and everything in it and began what has become an almost continuous purge.
I went through every room in our house, twice, and starting making piles – things to donate, things to trash, and things to consider keeping (which would be gone through again in a month). Let me tell you, it was liberating. I cleaned out my phone contacts, my apps, my emails – every possession I had both physical and electronic. And then I began on social obligations. And that’s where it turned a bit tricky. Things don’t have feelings, but people do. But one thing I’ve learned/am continuing to learn daily (perhaps in the wisdom that I’m about to turn 30 & perhaps that I’m really beginning to not care anymore) is that you can’t make everyone happy, and sometimes, it’s not worth surrounding yourself with people or activities that really don’t make your heart happy & your life better. There is an intentional nature in choosing joy & happiness. And sometimes it means letting go of things that aren’t inherently evil or bad, but just not the best. And sometimes it means saying no – and missing out – and just doing nothing with the one you love & going to bed early after a long week. Or not responding immediately to a text because you are too busy living life & being in the moment. Or forgetting to take a picture because you’re too busy laughing. Â But it always means letting go of having to do ALL THE THINGS, and be everything for everyone and simply living in the moment.
