I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. And how I don’t have enough of it. Can never be on it. And as much as I try, I can’t beat it.
My husband is a time person. “What time will you be home?” he often asks me, when he’s at home with our two- and six-year-old girls and I’m still at work. He’s like a GPS – he can accurately predict his ETA no matter what tasks he has left or where he’s coming from.
It’s not the same with me. “Uhh… I’ll leave in 30 minutes,” I say. If I focus hard enough, am not a perfectionist about things, and most importantly, don’t look at the clock… I truly believe that this time, I can get everything done in 30 minutes.
Two hours later, I’m home. “What? It’s not like I can see into the future,” I snap when I see my husband’s exhausted and disappointed eyes. It’s the closest thing to an apology that I’m able to muster up in the moment.
Another race against time. Another loss. And I still have hours of work ahead of me.
We fight. The girls fight. Then we fight our overtired girls as we rush them through dinner and the bedtime routine.
And then it’s time to get back to work… but I’m so tired. You need to take care of yourself, Kristin. You do too much. You need to learn how to work from a place of rest. Concerned words from people who love me bounce around my bogged-down mind.
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Rest – a word that seems to go hand in hand with lacking time. What does that even mean – “work from a place of rest”? I’ve been trying to do this for years. For me, what results from choosing rest over work is a neglected home overflowing with dirty dishes and laundry; family and friends thinking you’re too busy and self-absorbed to spend time with them (or worse, feeling insignificant to you); and the daily survival game of scrambling from one thing to the next, doing the things that should have been done earlier (when you chose to rest) so you can properly do the things you’re supposed to be doing right now.
So I work until I have just enough done to get me through tomorrow. Get into bed. And four to five hours later, I’m up again… And the cycle begins anew.
A dear friend of mine once said, “Time is good – it’s on your side. Because God created it.”
So time is not against me.
It’s on my side.
There is always enough of it.
Which means there should be enough time to rest – to be in one place at a time, to eat sitting down, to stop what I’m doing and look my husband in the eye when he’s talking to me, to play Calico Critters with my girls without picking up my phone to send a text or email, to get them ready for school in the morning or for bed at night without using the words hurry up, let’s go, we’re late…
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I know I’m not the first mom to work full time. And I’m pretty sure that the intense work hours right now are because I just started a new job after a season of being away from the workplace. But whether in the same career for years or a stay-at-home mom, in a seaside cottage in Maine or on a spiritual formation retreat in France… I’ve always struggled to find rest.
I’ve asked other moms for their time-management secrets. They’re the kind of people who give their time and energy generously, who do a lot and are probably tired… but somehow still seem at peace. I’ve read books, listened to podcasts, sermons…
And I’m slowly starting to grasp this other dimension of rest. It’s not just a block of time in your daily schedule, a separate activity from all the other parts of your day. I’d like it to be like that – something I do once, then check off my to-do list and go about my day, filled-up and ready to take on whatever comes at me with grace and wisdom.
No… rest seems to be a state that you choose to be in, all throughout your day. Which means that rest doesn’t always mean inactivity. Rest and work can happen at the same time.
I was on the playground with my younger daughter, who had been trying to climb this mountain-like structure onto the platform above when I heard her call for help. I found her glued to the wall, her right hand gripping the stone above her while her left foot refused to leave the stone below her. She was stuck – so overwhelmed by the task at hand that she couldn’t move. So I stood beside her, coaching and encouraging her. And with each step, I saw her face slowly change from anxiety to delight. And she did it.
The mountain didn’t disappear. Nothing about her circumstances changed once I arrived (I didn’t even offer a helping hand!). The only difference was that she took her focus off the mountain in front of her and set her eyes on me, instead. She followed my voice, followed my hand, and slowly made her way over the obstacle and to her destination.
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Rest is defined in the dictionary as to be grounded in; to depend on. To place hope, trust, or confidence on or in. To belong at a specified place or with a specified person. In the middle of my daughter’s struggle, she found rest in me.
So the questions I want to ask myself now, when I’m feeling stuck or overwhelmed and need to find rest, are based on these new definitions of rest that I’m learning to understand:
In what am I grounding my thoughts and identity as I complete the task before me?
In what am I placing my hope?
To what or to whom am I finding belonging?
Because in each of these high-pressure moments, if I am willing to stop and ask myself these questions, there are truths that can turn tasks into meaningful work, anxiety into hope, and striving into belonging. Truths that will transform the mountain in front of me into a bridge that takes me from where I am to where I want to be.
Time is on my side. I have enough of it. So I want to spend it wisely. I don’t want to miss things as I’m waiting for the perfect rest. I can rest now, in the middle of the chaos and things not going as planned and the never ending mountain of work.
And then when those little moments of beauty come that could easily go unnoticed by someone waiting for their perfect break… I can be fully present for it.
