The year I gave up busyness

I began to process today on the life of 'busyness' that we lead. Oh, I've processed on this before, generally as I found myself highly stressed by the overwhelming things that I needed to accomplish in a day.

Everyone complains about this, but we don't change our lifestyles. I emailed a friend about the topic this morning and began blogging at her in the email, I talked with another friend about it over lunch and then with her and another friend while we were getting our hair cuts this afternoon. And then, I talked to the first friend about it on the telephone later on this afternoon today as she tried to come to terms with her own busy life.

The gal who was cutting our hair told me that her elementary age daughter informed her that when she got too overwhelmed by all of the things going on in her world, she closes the door to her room and cries. She cries! At that age! Yah. Her mom didn't like the sound of that either.

I'm not really ready to make any big pronouncements about this, but God has been trying the last several years to get me to calm down. I don't believe that it's about me, but it's more about Him trying to get my attention. He's not trying to keep me healthy, or anything like that, though without high stress I'm certain that my blood pressure is at a healthier level. No, God is trying to get me to spend time with Him.

Reducing busyness in our lives is nearly impossible. We define our lives in this culture by the number of things we do and the number of things we do well.

Since I've left my job, people are constantly asking me what I'm doing now. As if I have to be doing something so that I can justify my existence and my choice to be home during the day. If I'm writing am I getting published? What else? I think it would probably be more acceptable if I was home raising children - at least that way being a mom is being productive.

What if I were to simply say that "I'm listening to God."? Is that acceptable? (these are rhetorical questions, I don't need affirmation or confirmation from anyone - it's ok - I'm good with all of this ... I'm just pondering).

I've lived the life that had me moving through each day from 7:30 am - 10:30 pm at high speed, sometimes never seeing the inside of my house until late in the evening. I hated that life. I gave up my favorite activity because that was the only evening of the week I wasn't required to be somewhere and I had to get myself home to my husband to regain a little sanity to cope with the rest of the craziness.

During all of that time I knew that I had creative things that I wanted to do, but I couldn't get enough quiet time to allow my brain to actually create.

The Year I Gave Up Busyness ... sounds like a good title for a book.