I am over committed. Over extended, stre-e-e-etched beyond my ability to cope.

How did I get here?

Every few months, my husband whisks our teenage kids off on a weekend trip and gives me three precious days alone. I typically use that time in retreat with God and, invariably, we end up looking at my time management…or lack thereof. :-/

Every time this happens, I end up apologizing, scaling back, finding a way to back out of things, cancel whatever I can until my life seems to appear to be more sane. It reminds me of the blackberry brambles I posted about earlier this summer. Hacking and slashing to cut it all back and make it manageable.

Problem is, beneath the surface is the healthy ROOT of the problem!

So here I find myself again…three months later…maybe six months later.

I find myself asking how I g0t here? Again… How is it I am overextended…again? This time it is worse than ever…more unanswered emails, more tasks promised and not finished…homeschool grading not graded, lesson plans not planned….house not cleaned…

I think I have it figured out…well, analyzed a bit anyhow.

This is what I have concluded…

My busy-ness is a product of the same character flaw as my overeating was. The same bingeing, gorgeing behavior that caused me to be heavy and sustain 100 extra pounds on my body has the same root as what I struggle with now–overcommiting myself.

I do not want to be still.

I do not want to hear what the silence may tell me.

Don’t get me wrong. I dutifully have a quiet time daily with little fail. I love bible study and my time before the family is up is important to me…but am I really quiet during my quiet time? If I am honest, I would have to say NO. I am busy filling in my blanks, analyzing, jotting notes, gosh, even journaling my prayers instead of BEING STILL.

When I was constantly eating a lot, I know it was to anaesthetize myself from pain…sometime the pain of just being aware of emptiness within. I believe that this busy-ness is similarly motivated. If I am so busy that I can’t really be still, then not only do I not have to cope with the truth…pain, emptiness, loneliess, but I also convince myself (false flattery, really) that I am significant.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that I am significant in God’s eyes. He has a purpose in mind for me that is perfect and very important! But if I am always too busy, too overcommitted to ask Him what HIS will is for this moment, this hour, this day, how will I ever experience his best? I am settling for, as CS Lewis put it, the mud puddles in the slum while I have been invited to the seashore for a glorious holiday! God’s best is so far beyond what I am doing in a feeble attempt to remain detached from my own heart.

It is time for me to be still…to truly be still and know he is God.

Odd, isn’t it, how this behavior that looks so very honorable in our society (that of being BUSY) really, at its heart, is a form of gluttony and sin just as constantly indulging in eating was/is? When God is not the director of my steps, my choices, the center of my life, I am out of his will. He is loving and eager to embrace me and restore me–there is no condemnation…but rather than treating the symptom, I think it is time to get to the heart of the issue…deeper still.