Driving the Speed Limit

Waking up to my second alarm, I jumped out of bed and rushed through my morning routine. Brush teeth; find clothes. Pack workout gear for after work, take daily vitamins, take extra vitamins, turn on Bible app, find shoes, warm up car, fix hair while answering email, scan the Sadie Robertson quote on my mirror: “What if we truly believed all that God said he would do?”

“Yes, what if we did?” I mumble to myself in the mirror.

I find the stainless steel travel mug with the wavy texture in the same place I left it last night and set the coffee maker to “hot water.” Grabbing my lunch and notebook I hug each of my kids as they wander through the kitchen. How much earlier do I need to get up to be a “good mom” and make them breakfast I wonder. Tea done, I grab my keys and head for the door. Ugh. I wonder if I will ever figure out my morning routine. Well, I can try again when my head hits the pillow in 15 hours.

“Lord I am overwhelmed. I can’t find time anywhere. I’ve looked!”

“When I am overwhelmed just means that I have more going on than I have time to process” —Henry Cloud Townsend

That was my answer to this question. Honestly, I knew this a long time before I let it sink in.

Straightener on, Bible app playing, car warming up, applying makeup and trying to map my day at the same time. Did you know multitasking is actually a myth? We are only really able to rapidly switch tasks (Ask Caroline Leaf, she is a neuroscientist). There is a good chance I was not doing any of my morning tasks well with my attention split like that.

It was a miracle I showed up to work that day with matching socks.

I can’t even remember exactly the last time I posted something. I have been so busy trying to “catch up” so I could write that its fallen away completely.

Honestly I’ve been facing some giants my life and in my own mental health that needed facing. I would love to tell you I faced a whole army of them with courage and threw the stones that the Lord told me to throw.

But…

I also value honesty and sincerity.

So the truth is I’ve been facing the same giants I’ve been facing. Somedays it feels like I’m going in circles on this journey.

The adventure of learning grace for myself and understanding my authority in Christ is one I am likely to be on for a while.

And that’s okay. It’s a process. Like old-school photography we need time to develop these concepts and lessons one at a time.

As much as we would like to, we can’t learn a whole concept or lesson well if we are mentally somewhere else. We need to be fully present and aware of each moment and soak in all it has to offer, or we will miss it and have to repeat it later.

It is okay for us to be on the same journey for a while and even loop back again. When we add frustration with ourselves and become hyper critical of every action—all of that striving and struggling becomes the background noise of life.

Hello overwhelmed.

We become busy and cranky and tired and just plain worn out. We weren’t created to handle the daily workload of God! Nor were we meant to anticipate every unexpected outcome.

We know the truth, and if we are being honest…we can hear His voice. But will we stop and stand still in the moment and be present long enough to soak in the depths of each lesson before trying to grab it an move on?

These last few months I have felt like I was stuck in a riptide gasping for breath every time I felt His presence, praying it would sustain me until the next. I could feel my strength waning in the day to day effort to just-keep-going.

Driving home after work one night I felt the pressure of the gas pedal under my foot and watched the road disappear under the car, marveling at the quiet country homes I was passing. They became a blur as I sped up and reached highway speed. Hop poles whisked past dizzying place markers of a future crop.

I had the sudden realization that the more I pushed the gas, the faster the road disappeared.

Yes, it is a simple and quite obvious revelation. Stick with me, I realized that I am the one who controls the speed. Not God, not my neighbor, not my sister, not even my husband. It’s me. I am pushing the gas pedal, I am speeding up, I am causing things to spin faster.

My circumstances were taking more time than I wanted them to, so I was trying to fit in a “normal” amount of life. But the problem is my life right now IS normal. Whatever is happening right now, is my life. There is no getting back to it. Just walking through whatever we are walking through. It’s not messier now; its just plain messy.

I can’t clean myself up, to go to Christ to get clean. I can’t ask God to slow things down when I’m the one with the lead foot.

If we truly want God to take the wheel, we need to let Him drive the car. He gets to control the speed, the steering, the direction, the duration…all of it.

If being overwhelmed is having more to process than we have time for, then we need to allow each moment to stretch a little longer.

We won’t have as many things in our days, but we will have more meaningful moments in our lives. We just need to pause and be still.