Is this Why It Is Hard for Us to Slow Down?
Do you feel like you have more to do than there are hours in the day? Work, kids, sports, school, home projects, and the list goes on. We claim to know that we are too busy, and that we need to slow our schedules down. Yet we continue to run on the rat wheel. Even if we say we want to jump off we don’t know how without hurting ourselves.
Maybe it’s not that we don’t know how to get off the wheel. Maybe we don’t want to slow down. We feel that if we slow down, even just a little, we will have to deal with the stuff we don’t want to notice is there.
Jar Full of Mud
Recently I had the privilege of listening to Dr. David and Dr. Jayne Schooler teach. I have read their book – Wounded Children, Healing Homes. But this was the first time to hear from them in person. They shared what I thought is a perfect analogy.
If I took a large mason jar and filled it with water from a creek, stock tank (that is a man-made pond filled with fish for you non-Texans), or river, the jar would fill up with muddy water. If I let the jar sit for a few days, the mud and pollutants would settle to the bottom making it easier to see what is in the water.
Is this why we won’t slow down our busy lives? If we sit long enough, the things we don’t want to notice will settle down to where we can’t ignore them?
We don’t want to feel pain. We don’t want to feel disappointment. We don’t want to remember failures, regrets, or past hurts. It is easier to just keep so busy that we never have time to notice these things in our lives.
Why Does this Matter?
Because none of us can invest much in another person if we are, one, too busy, and two, have junk in our lives that we haven’t dealt with yet.
It is easy to admit that we are too busy to walk across the street, care for a vulnerable child, get to know a homeless person, or go on a short-term mission trip. We sigh and lament that we would do these things if I just had the time.
But let’s say that we do arrange our schedule so that we do have time to invest in another person. If we have not dealt with things in our life that would settle to the bottom, then even if we have time for others, we won’t have the emotional space for them.
A hurting person needs someone who not only has time but also the capacity to deal with their brokenness.
I am not going to leave you hanging, so here are a few suggestions from Dr. David and Dr. Jayne Schooler.
Find someone that can be a resource for you. Someone who encourages you, truly listens to you, cheers for you. What you don’t want is to surround yourself with people who are either are neutral or deplete you.
Put the things that you don’t like and can’t change in a box and find away to move around it. You have a choice. Either react with anger or learn to adapt and move on if you truly can’t change it. For example, if you have lost someone close to you, you can’t change that fact. If you don’t move on, you will not have all of yourself for someone else who needs you.
Stay in the river of learning. Resist the notion that you know all you need to know. Keep reading. Get around those who know more than you do. Listen to podcasts.
Remember…somewhere someone needs you. The best you.
