It was well past 1 a.m., and I was still frantically working on an article with a deadline just hours away. I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep yet. Between classes and work, I knew the article wouldn’t be in on time if I didn’t finish it immediately—but I was near tears as I remembered the editing I still had to do. To top it off, I wasn’t going to have time to read my Bible, and I felt enormously guilty about it. I couldn’t even look forward to going to bed, knowing I’d have to get up far too early and spend the next day working feverishly.
This late-night rush to finish homework happened far more times than I could count last semester. And it wasn’t that I was procrastinating. Between full-time classes, my internship at a local newspaper, attempts to have a social life, and work as a conservative speaker, writer, and podcast host, I barely had time to think, let alone get everything done.
Probably every woman has gone through a period of feeling that it’s impossible to keep up. Tara Sun knows this well. Sun is a mother, the host of the podcast Truth Talks with Tara, an influencer, a speaker, and the author of several books, most recently the aptly titled Overbooked and Overwhelmed: How to Keep Up with God When You’re Just Trying to Keep Up with Life. Using her own struggles with busyness and distraction, Sun shares what she’s learned about prioritizing faith and slowing down.
Sun’s central theme is that “Jesus is better.” In fact, she writes, “before we named this book Overbooked and Overwhelmed, I toyed with the idea of including ‘Jesus is better’ in the title. … This is the bedrock upon which this whole book stands.”
We are overwhelmed not only because we have a lot to do, Sun argues, but also because we’re distracted and focusing on the wrong things. We’ve filled every space in our lives with something—be it scrolling social media for a quick five minutes, watching TV while doing mundane tasks, or listening to podcasts while we travel—using up time we should be giving to Christ.
“The little choices we make each day, saying yes to either devotion or distraction, add up,” Sun says. “Our choices, like ignoring our Bible yet again and scrolling social media, may feel inconsequential in the moment, but those choices put down roots too, whether we realize it or not.”
To break this pattern, she explains, we need to examine ourselves and discern what we’re desiring above the Lord, because the things we value influence how we live. We naturally long for peace, comfort, security, and acceptance, but too often we’re seeking them from sources other than God. In the midst of our over-busy, fast-paced lives, the fundamental answer to our feelings of overwhelm is to prioritize Jesus over our calendars.
But practically, how do we do that when our lives feel like a never-ending whirlwind? Sun stresses the importance of building habits and taking the time to reflect on what God has done in our lives.
Each chapter ends with reflection questions women can use to examine our minds and hearts and reorient our lives to focus on Christ. I know from experience that taking time to journal through questions like this can be a more effective teaching tool than reading alone, and Sun does a good job highlighting and then dismantling lies readers may have come to believe about busyness and distraction. Her practical tips for reorienting life around Jesus are tips we can actually follow.
In a few places, however, Overbooked and Overwhelmed struck me as a bit wordy and redundant, as if Sun didn’t have quite enough substance for a project of this size. For instance, when Sun is explaining the importance of devotion to Christ, she says the same thing multiple times in different ways. Her conversational tone would feel natural in an Instagram caption but didn’t always translate well to print.
A more serious flaw was some of Sun’s scriptural exegesis. Though the bulk of Overbooked and Overwhelmed is biblically sound, Sun sometimes plays fast and loose when turning to Scripture to support minor points—points that could have stood on their own as simple Christian prudence or that could have been better supported with other parts of the Bible. In these spots, Sun would pull a lesson the story wasn’t meant to teach or use a verse to make a point that had nothing to do with what the passage was saying.
For example, Sun gives a quick recap of the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17, focusing on the part where Saul gives David his armor to try on. David “tried in vain to go,” verse 39 says, and could not, “for he had not tested them” (ESV throughout). Sun concludes this retelling by commenting that “David playing dress-up in Saul’s armor teaches us something profound: What fits for some may not fit for others.”
That’s not false, and it may even be reminiscent of Paul talking in 1 Corinthians 9 about becoming all things to all people so he can deliver the unchanging gospel. But it’s not the point of David and Goliath. The story is about David’s faith and his total reliance on God, rather than external things like Saul’s armor, to defeat the giant.
It’s also not scripturally inaccurate to recognize, as Sun does, that human limitations can be a good thing: “Limitations, if seen through the lens of Christ, are liberating. They push us towards God’s strength when we come to the end of ours. And they are license to give two of life’s most precious commodities—time and energy—to the things of God.”
But when Mark 10:14 says, “Let the children come to me,” Jesus is not talking about the beauty of limitations. He’s highlighting God’s love for children and saying we should come to Christ with a trusting, childlike faith.
It’s not necessarily wrong to draw this kind of subpoint from Scripture—but it’s certainly not strong argumentation. And it risks looking as if the Bible is being used in service to a predetermined point rather than serving as inspiration and authority.
Fortunately, most of Overbooked and Overwhelmed doesn’t follow that pattern. The book is helpful for women who feel that they can’t keep up with life, much less their faith. As someone who is constantly overbooked and overwhelmed (you thought that frantic writing session was just last semester? You should see my summer schedule!), I found Overbooked and Overwhelmed to be encouraging.
Sun was at her best in calling out situations we don’t normally think of as problematic in our day-to-day lives, such as constantly being distracted and surrounded by the noise of social media, overbooked calendars, and overwhelmed hearts:
If we’re being honest, a lot of us don’t see distraction as a detriment to our souls. We don’t see the problem. Don’t we deserve to enjoy what makes us feel happy and rested? Don’t we deserve a little relief and entertainment when we work hard or when life is hard? Is distraction really that soul deep? What if it’s just the norm in this thing we call the twenty-first century?
It might be the norm, but Sun makes a compelling case that it shouldn’t be. Even when we don’t think our distractions are a big deal—it’s just five minutes on Instagram—they add up and often, subtly but surely, reshape our lives for the worse.
That’s especially true when we allow ourselves to be distracted from spending time with Jesus. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the things God has given us, Sun acknowledges, but we must not let them distract us from God as the source and center of our lives.
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When my schedule is busy, I tend to reach for my phone or turn on a TV show during breaks because I just want to turn my brain off. Even when I get up in the morning, my first instinct is to scroll rather than read my Bible, because thinking itself can feel overwhelming. Overbooked and Overwhelmed reminded me anew that the fleeting comfort from numbing my brain will leave me empty and less mature in Christ.
“Netflix and Instagram may provide a hit of dopamine or a retreat from reality, and they definitely have their perks, but those perks are fleeting for our souls,” Sun writes. “A well that will always run out, a cistern too broken to hold anything of value. But how our souls really, truly, and deeply find satisfaction is through devoting ourselves to God.”
It’s easy to remember God works in us to sanctify us—and too easy to forget we have a responsibility as believers to make the right choices. Though God is working in our hearts, we still have a responsibility, Sun says, to “roll up our sleeves and participate in the work God starts and sustains in us.”
Practically, Sun advises, that may look like being more specific about the habit you want to form and layering it on top of something you’re already doing. Say you want to get some Bible reading in every morning, but you can’t seem to make time. Could you listen to Scripture while you’re making breakfast, commuting, or working out?
For women who desperately want to be closer to God but are so busy we can barely think, these practical ideas are a blessing. Sun provides realistic ways of keeping Christ the focus of our lives, including suggestions for reflection and creating goals. She explores the tendency to say yes too frequently and God’s ability to work through us—including our weaknesses and the times we have to say no. And she makes sense of our limitations, pointing out that Christ, though fully God, is fully human, and therefore had physical limitations too. Jesus, the Son of God, needed to spend time with his heavenly Father just as we do. He prioritized it where we too often do not.
It is vital to refocus our minds and hearts on the one who matters most, because our stress and responsibilities can only be handled through him. Even when our responsibilities are good, if we’re not focusing on Jesus, they can become burdens too heavy for us to bear.
“A wasted life happens,” Sun says, “when we let our forgetfulness of who God is and what we were made for allow us to live small and live forgetful of His goodness, His truth, and His commission.” I needed that reminder, and I know many women—and men—do as well.
Kenna Hartian is the Habecker fellow at Christianity Today.
