My cranium must be thicker than most, for it took me several years to hear what a friend was saying. “When are you going to slow down?” she would ask me.
“Oh, this is just an unusually busy time,” I would say cheerfully. “But it’s going to slow down in a couple of months.”
Three months later, she would ask again. I’d give the same answer. This continued, like a tv rerun, until I finally got the clue: It’s absurd to pretend I’ve been abnormally busy for five years.
The issue intensified last fall when I flew off a jet-ski going 40 mph and sustained a concussion. Unable to shake the dizziness and nausea, I reluctantly decided to take two weeks away from work to try to recover.
Weak and woozy, I began to pray about this oddly persistent busyness in my life. Was it drivenness? A desire to make a difference for God? A need to find affirmation from others?
Since then, I have discovered that reconstructive surgery of the motivations is more complex, and takes longer, than I’d imagined. But by God’s grace I’m making progress in three areas:
Achievement. It’s beautiful to work hard and accomplish much, but a drive for achievement can wring the water out of a soul, leaving nothing for prayer, joy, patience, family. And most congregations and denominations will applaud you while you slowly kill your spirit in this way.
I’ve found the most help in this area from a Christian writer six hundred years and a wide ocean away. Julian of Norwich, as she’s known, can’t stop writing phrases like, “The love that God most high has for our soul is so great that it surpasses understanding.”
Reading her, at first I felt, She just can’t get off this love theme. But then I realized, What else is there in life? Isn’t the best thing to receive God’s love, to love him, to give his love to people, and to let them love me? I inscribed that on page 1 of my prayer journal, and gradually, the desire to receive God’s love and to love others is balancing the powerful desire to achieve.
Adrenalin. I always said, “I don’t feel stressed; I love what I do.” Then I read Leadership adviser Arch Hart’s book Adrenalin and Stress. I learned that when we face constant challenges, adrenalin surges through our system, giving us energy, helping us focus, making us feel good. But no matter how good we feel, constant busyness wears and tears the body God has given us. To leave a life of chronic overcommitment, we must go through physical withdrawal from adrenalin and learn to live on less of it.
Affirmation from others. Doesn’t much busyness, at its root, come from a need for others to like us? It feels good when people tell me, “I don’t know how you do all that you do.” Sometimes, we’d especially like to please someone who uncannily resembles a parent who did not affirm us as much as we’d hoped. I’m learning that there is only one Heavenly Father; the people I’d like to please are, like me, simply broken people audaciously loved by God.
It’s hard to change. I still don’t like saying no or disappointing people. But there are wonderful rewards along the way. Now when I pray, my mind does not race with as many unfinished projects. I’m listening to my kids better. I enjoy the snow outlining tree branches as I drive to work.
No matter how difficult it is to fight busyness, I have determined to do so. A soul is a terrible thing to waste.
Kevin A. Miller is editor of Leadership.
1997 by Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
