I don’t know about you, but I tend to live life to the fullest.
Or rather, I fill my life too full. It’s an auto-pilot thing for me.
If I’ve got time, I’ve got space to fill that time.
Maybe you can relate, or maybe you view busyness in a slightly different way, but would still like to let go of some of what holds you captive. I mean, keeps you busy…
I once would have told you “There is no such thing as being too busy” or that “multitasking can add layers to your productivity”. That “idle hands” and all of that.
Then I found out that busyness is essentially a coping mechanism for my personality.
For work, I took a personality test, and let me tell you, this test felt like an unboxing of all the things I’d buried deep inside of me. What I hadn’t noticed in my life, up until a short year ago, is that I keep busy so that I don’t process. Processing emotions is not something I love to do (I did know that!) But I never really knew the why behind it.
My personality type seems to seek adventure, new, and the next best thing. So keeping busy, in my mindset, keeps me from processing what I’ve been through while also filling that “seeking” portion of myself.
The problem with busyness is, it leaves no room for God to move you.
You’ve filled life so full that you are in control of it all.
How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog – it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise, you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil.
James 4:14-16
We’d filled our family life too full and the puzzle pieces no longer fit together smoothly. Something had to give. The easiest thing to give at that moment in our lives, the thing that overlapped with everything else, was my job. This was huge. I’d had my job since 2005, who was I without it? Could we survive if I left it? What would that look like for our family?… The list goes on.
We took a leap of faith.
In April 2023, I left. Suddenly, my life wasn’t so busy anymore. I had a bit more time. For years, I’d worked 5 days a week 4:30a-9:30a. Now, I’ve become a different person.
I wake up every morning (mostly) and walk, and I have uninterrupted bible and prayer time. I’ve always had my quiet time, but later in the day when I could “fit it in” and was interrupted by children. Now it’s a routine they know is happening. Since leaving work, I’ve realized time is precious, and tiny little things matter.
These two things changed the whole course of my day. I no longer feel the need to fill every second of every day. I have learned to say no to things, now that I’ve had some freedom when it comes to fewer hours being filled.
I like what the Lord is doing in those hours. He is guiding my steps. He is connecting me to my children with less grumbling and quickness because I’m less stressed.
We didn’t want to let go of my job. It had health benefits, it had income, it had a sense of security. But time and time again we heard the Lord saying, “I have those things too, I have you, let go and trust me, this is what needs to happen.”
It was a significant adjustment, and it took me the most time to come to terms with it. I felt like I lost part of my identity. However, I also felt like I’d lost part of my identity in who I was within the job. So many moments since then have led to reassurance that this was the Lord at work and that we needed to listen.
Maybe it’s not work for you, maybe it’s saying no to some of these things asked of you, maybe it’s taking something else entirely off your plate, or taking something off for a season. I had no room in life to say “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that” because I’d filled life too full.
Clearing space enough, or time enough in life, to ask this of the Lord daily…that has made all the difference. It brought me back to a sermon I’d heard years ago, the takeaway line of that sermon: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
Create space to listen to the Lord move you. It’s wild how much your life will change.
