The one way to avoid the hustle of a new season

An orange one subject wide-ruled spiral notebook. It said it right there in the middle of the 4th-grade school supply list. Like it was no big deal. Right between pencils, pens, and erasers. Like it would be just as easy to locate. An orange one subject wide-ruled spiral notebook. It might as well have said a one-eared single-toed sloth.

Of all the things?  We combed store after store, dug through boxes of hooked together spiral notebooks, elbowed our way through list toting moms and tried not to step on dejected slump-shouldered kids. There was much arguing and gnashing of teeth. Back to school shopping at its best.

And with this notebook search, we began the hustle into our new season. Not exactly how I envisioned it working.

Every year, this shift from lazy summer days to school time schedule fast tracks us all into a pace we never see coming.

And you’d think I’d have it figured out by now. I’ve been sending kids back to school for over a decade. But new seasons get me every time. I make plans to enter it slowly. I intend to do it well. But then life happens, and I end up just racing headlong into what’s next. What is it some smart person said about the “best-laid plans of mice and men”? It never goes like I think it should. Never.

And suddenly, I find myself knee deep in a pile of spiral notebooks pinned into a crowded Target aisle, certain that an orange notebook could save us all.

New seasons, back to school times, changes looming out on the horizon of our days, these things can spin us around and make us anxious. I always think the solution is to go faster; to get more done. And I am always wrong. I forget the one thing that actually does slow the hustle and ease the chaos.

I forget the pause; the rest. The silence that comes before the noise. I forget how much it matters.

In music, singers and musicians are taught from the very beginning about the importance of rests. We learn what they look like and how long they are supposed to last. Directors are insistent that we pay attention.
But we are often apt to skip over them anyway. The notes just seem to matter more. We forget to mark the rests; forget how important they are in making the music.

I learned this the hard way. Years ago, I was singing in a  large choir for a director who was loud, boisterous and a little scary. We were singing a difficult German piece at an important event. And the piece was full of rests. During one particular rehearsal, I made a horrendous and offensive mistake. I sang during the rest. Loudly. Right into the silence, I blasted my note. I still stand by the fact that it was the right note. But it filled the space meant for the rest.

And the director did not care about my right note. In front of an entire orchestra, choir and numerous other directors, he lobbed a chalkboard eraser at my upturned folder and yelled, “No! Smiley Soprano, No! You erased the beauty of the whole piece by ruining the rest. The music means nothing if you sing through the rests!”

I wanted to melt into the floorboards. But. I got his point.

The music is nothing if you sing through the rest. The pause is what makes the music before and after the rests ring true.

And perhaps the lesson is the same in life. Jumping from one season to the next, we are prone to forget the importance of the pause. We just race ahead into our next thing. New place, new job, new school supplies,  new backpack, new year; off we go. And we wonder why we can’t see straight by the end of the first week.

We forget to pause.

“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me. Work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” (Matthew 11:28-29).

Eugene Peterson beautifully rephrases Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Matthew. And as this new year kicks off, it is a verse I need to read over and over again.

Maybe you too?

And those unforced rhythms of grace? Well, they just might be learned in the silence between the notes.

My prayer for you and for me as we begin this new year is that we wouldn’t sing through the rests. That we would take a minute and pause for a collective breath before we blast out our next notes.

It doesn’t have to be a long rest. No one would listen to a song if the rests lasted longer than the music. It’s just a way of looking up; a way of hearing Jesus call us out of our frantic search for orange notebooks and into his way of making it through our days.

It’s Scripture and prayer and breath for each new day. It’s moments where we aren’t so concerned with the next thing.

It’s in the pause between the notes when the hustle slows and we can remember we aren’t in this all alone.

So. I have created a little gift for you; something to help you with a quick pause as the new year begins. If you are a regular subscriber this gift is attached to the email I sent you with this post. If you aren’t a subscriber I would love to send you this gift; just pop your email in the box below and it will land in your inbox.

And may your new season, whatever it looks like, have less hustle and more pause, may it be full of music accented by rests and may God teach you how to walk in his own unforced rhythms of grace each day.