What happens when you move too fast?

We have this calendar app that we use as a family. And I am seriously grateful for it. With three boys and lots of activities, we move fast. Keeping up with life would be  impossible without a structure to hold us together. But some days? Some days, the sight of that app with its tiny colored dots representing each person in my house and his need to be somewhere at a specific time makes the world feel like it is moving in fast forward.

And here we are again, right? This time of year where we all buckle down and hold on tight because we know what is coming. This race through the holidays looms large out on the horizon and though I dearly love this season, I do not love how fast it makes me move.

I scroll through the next few weeks on our calendar and my eyes fall on this day in far-off December. The white space of this day is covered in dots. And every dot has multiple lists after it. I feel my pulse begin to race. How in the world? What are we gonna do? I’m going to need to … It all starts to blur.
You know those days. The ones that seem logistically impossible. Just looking at them can sap your energy. Or maybe for you, it is a list of tasks or the size of a project that sits heavy on your mind.  You wonder if you have what it takes. You wonder if you can move fast enough to do it all. And you wonder what it is going to cost you to make it to the finish line.

I’m trying to solve this puzzle of December 15th when I realize there is a message on my phone. I click to listen and a friend’s voice fills my kitchen. Today, she says, is Monday, November 27th. November. She draws the word out slowly and then laughs. The sound of her voice stops me in my tracks; my feet find their way back into the ground of this day. Today. It’s Monday, November 27th.

It’s this silly habit some friends and I adopted after listening to Emily P. Freeman’s podcast The Next Right Thing. Freeman constantly reminds her listeners to stop and simply say the date; to ground ourselves in the place where we actually are. How many days do I run through never knowing what the date is? Too many to count.

And so these friends and I try to help each other remember that God did not create us to live in frantic motion. When we feel the racing of time, we stop and say the date to each other. The events of December 15th had me in a stranglehold, but that simple reminder pushes air back into my lungs.

I stand still in the kitchen and replay my friend’s voice. It’s Monday, November 27th. And the fast forward motion slows a bit.

Elisabeth Elliot says this in her book Secure in the Everlasting Arms, “One reason that we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business when all that legitimately concerns us is today.”

And no other time of year beckons us to wrestle the coming days into submission more than these holidays.

I hear that verse from Matthew in the back of my head; it’s the King James version I learned as a kid, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” or in normal words, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

But, oh that is hard. How can I stay in today when tomorrow holds a serious amount of work? And next week? And December 15th? We have to find a way to plan for tomorrow without letting those plans suck all of the air out of our todays.

I scroll the calendar app back up to today’s date. Thursday, November 29th. I say it out loud. A meeting, some writing to do, a list of emails that need my attention, a kid to take to the orthodontist, groceries to buy, and The Articles of Confederation to study with my 4th grader; these all fill in the box for today. And after dinner, a Christmas tree to buy.

That is today.

My eyes settle on just that one square of space. Tomorrow will require more of me and December 15th might require me to split myself in half. But for now?

I will not be bossed around by the colored circles on my calendar. I will hold space for my people, for the events of just this day and I will keep my eyes open for Jesus.

Because that’s what happens when we move too fast. We become those who are unable to see. The people in front of us are reduced to colored dots on a calendar app, and we rush around unaware of the gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit. We follow chaos and we hear only noise. And we wonder why our souls feel wrung out empty.

“The visible world daily bludgeons us with its things and events. They push and pull at our bodies. Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes, eggs, and toast. But instead of shouting and shoving, the spiritual world whispers at us ever so gently” (Dallas Willard, Hearing God).

And so I whisper back.

Today is Thursday, November 29th, Lord help me stay here. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear you. May the words of mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. And Lord may you be my strength and my Redeemer… for today. 

Amen.
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