Live Slowly (eBook)

Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t write our own stories.

To Feel or Not to Feel

For so many years after this double tragedy of Brian’s accident and later death, my biggest fear of slowing down came because I knew I’d need to sit with the hard stuff. I knew that I might not get answers. But mostly, I didn’t want to feel the feelings. Those things I refused to think about, relive, question why, or deal with. There was a loneliness in knowing that many people around me either couldn’t fathom my experiences or had moved on from them. My heart could bear reliving trauma only so much—which is probably why I put off important therapy for eighteen years after that.

There looms this underlying fright and agitation in not wanting to pause, not wanting to let time and stillness carve out things you cannot name. It’s a universal fear because we all know that control very often slips out of our hands like sand. On her Instagram, Tutu Mora writes, “Feeling the need to be busy all the time is a trauma response and fear-based distraction from what you’d be forced to acknowledge and feel if you slowed down.”

For most of us it’s easier to plan a busy weekend of constant social obligations than it is to make space to talk to our partner or our parents about that looming difficult thing. We might even tackle a big project so we can avoid dealing with siblings bickering or teenagers’ attitudes. However, not wanting to face God and admit that we aren’t sure if we even trust him—even though we are leading the women’s Bible study at church, serving on a mission board, or volunteering at the soup kitchen—is a whole ’nother thing, as we say here in the South.

If you’re like me, there are times when it’s easier to keep busy: head down, putting one foot in front of another. Until we can’t. When we burn out from the busyness and we are forced to stop, this is our invitation to take inventory of all the unsaid, the undone, the unobserved. This divine pause creates time to reflect and gives us the opportunity to shift. It opens up a whole new world if we only let it. Our bodies and our minds were not meant to keep up this wild pace. What we desperately need is a shift, a collective exhale as we find our way again.

After Brian’s death, I started an internal journey, wrestling with trusting the God I had known my whole life. I would have to unlearn some things in the years ahead and begin anew to believe that I was truly held by God. The same God who breathed life into Adam when he formed him from dirt. The same God who walked the garden with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day.

The Bible says: “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7 NRSV). The name God reveals for himself in Exodus, “I AM WHO I AM,” is spelled YHWH in Hebrew. When I pronounce it, it only comes out as a breath, a soft whooshing sound.

Breath. Life. Death. I am in awe.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes God seems really slow? The day my pastor, Kenny, asked that question from the pulpit, there was a sweeping wave of agreement in the nods, weary smiles, and sighs of our little congregation. As I sat there in the old wooden pew, looking up at the brass lanterns hanging high above me, I had one of those slow-drifting-out-to-sea moments. It was Advent. As I pondered Pastor Kenny’s words, I saw the paradox. The golden glow lit up the space where the tiny crosses were set in our old church lights hanging from the high rafters. With little beacons of hope shining through, I felt an exhale, a relaxing of my shoulders. And yet, the stark reality of the hustle and the pain in the world was right outside our doors, a busy world we no doubt would all immerse ourselves in throughout that Advent season.

But for a while now, I have sensed a shift beginning—a collective pushing back on the social norms, expectations, and traditions of a life of hurry. We are starting to see that hurried living is a coverup when all along, throughout the generations, we have had God’s gracious invitation to humankind. That is the invitation to breathe easier again. Jesus himself gives us the most beautiful invitation to slower living with rest for our weary souls. Come linger with me in these words:

We Don’t Have the Control After All

We are free to rest in the fact that we do not have as much control as we would like to think we do. We don’t have to run away from our pain by staying busy....