The Hurry Sickness

My Activate! class this week was based on the the "Hurry Sickness." Most people I know are affected by this underlying need to accomplish things from their long term goals to everyday tasks as quickly as possible. I will be the first person to admit that this fits my personality to a tee. I love schedules. I love having my day planned out. I love carrying around my day planner. I get excited each time my computer syncs my Google calendar with my Desktop calendar. The problem is when one of the events on my calendar goes over the time that I have given it, I give into this hurry sickness. I'm panicked and stressed out that I am not on schedule and everything I think should be completed isn't going to be completed in the amount of time that I think it should be done. This has the capability to turn into complete madness. As I look back, I can count a thousand other situations where I have focused so much on getting through in a timely manner that I have missed the joy in the situations. One good example I can think of is college and grad school. Did I really grab hold of my college experience, take time to enjoy it and not feel the need to rush through? Absolutely not. I took as many courses as I could take each semester (one semester I had to get approval of the dean to take over the max of 24 hours). The time I wasn't in class I thought I had to be involved with something else. Work, church, family stuff, volunteering, shopping just to name a few. I look back on that time in my life and I remember very little down time. One thing that I have learned over the past year or so is that I need some solitude time. Apparently it took God moving me 10 hours away from everything I know to make me realize that, but I finally understood that I need to slow down and give God some of the schedule (other than scheduled services) that I was keeping so full. The main problem I was having is that I thought everything had to be completed according to my timeline not God's.

A great example used in class today was the story of when Jesus came to visit Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha was so worried about the setting and the food and making everything perfect for the Lord that she didn't take time to focus on just being with Jesus like her sister. This reminded me of something our pastor described in the morning service. He talked about the 2 parts of ourselves, the inner self and the outer self. The inner self is our soul, conscious and our relationship with God. The outer self is focused on beauty, perfection and physical belongings. In this story Martha was very focused on the outer self where her sister Mary was focused on her inner self, being her relationship with God. We all, myself first and foremost, need to focus more on our inner self and stop being preoccupied with our outer selves.

As class was ending today and I was gathering my belongings, I was thinking to myself: "Self, this week we are going to be patient and not focus so much on a schedule and just let the Lord lead us according to his timeline." I was very confident that I could achieve that goal for the week. Well......that lasted approx 10 minutes. After church I got in my car, got on the highway and stopped at a red light. It wasn't until the light turned green that I noticed that I was behind a transfer truck. As the truck slowly started turning his gears in effort to accelerate, I noticed that 4 cars in the next lane had already blown through the green light. Just as I said out loud "You have got to be kidding me," in response to the slow moving truck and my rush to get home (for no reason in particular), God just reminded me that I needed to slow down and not be so concerned with my timeline and just let him be in control. Just to help myself learn patience, I stayed behind that slow transfer truck for the next 10 miles, even though I had ample opportunity to switch lanes and blow right past him. Hopefully, this taught me a lesson.

This week try to remember that we are living on God's time not our own. Let him guide your schedules this week.