Greetings friends!
First, a wee bit of housekeeping. In addition to the blog being back, Season Three of Roughing the Pastor dropped yesterday. Check it out here!
As mentioned in a few previous posts, things are opening back up here in the ‘States, thanks to the vaccine. The number of places I need to wear a mask is dropping lower and lower. Church is starting to look like what church usually looks like. I no longer fear that every cough I have is going to wind up killing me. My personal favorite: I’ve been eating in restaurants more and more, learning about places like Krency’s here in Washington. It’s a classic old school diner in every sense, and I absolutely love it down there. Though I should say, when I’m at Krency’s I very frequently sit in the very same booth, eat the very same meal, and play the crosswords from the physical newspaper I get each day. I believe I am now 92 years old…
When things were shut down, the question most people asked me was when I thought we were getting back to “normal.” I have answered this question the same way so frequently that I’m truly starting to believe that it’s cliche, but I don’t think we’re ever going to see the normal we used to know. We as a nation have been through a national trauma, in fact we’ve been through a few of them. I heard it said that you can never step in the same river twice, and that feels like where we are now. The world is vastly different than it was in February 2020, and by the way, so are you and I. Normal as we knew it is gone.
And yet, it feels like there’s this push in the culture toward…doing. We need to do stuff. We need to go out more. We need to work more. We need to shop more. We need to just be doing and doing and doing. I’m starting to think that when we said we were looking forward to going back to normal, what some of us were really saying is that we were looking forward to being busy again.
Busy-ness is a drug in the American culture if you ask me. For some folks, it’s how we justify our existence to our neighbors. If you listen really closely to those people in your life who are complaining about how busy they are, there’s usually a tone of bragging in their voice. Some people might even be smiling when they tell you how overwhelmed they are. We have a fear of missing out, to be sure. But I think we’ve also let the protestant work ethic, whatever that is, get so far ahead of itself that we haven’t stopped to ask why. And lest you think that I am sitting here in my office throwing stones, the only reason I’m writing about any of this is because I see it so clearly in myself right now. A few restrictions get eased and all of a sudden my calendar is working overtime. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think busy-ness is a drug I’m hooked on, and I for one would like to get off.
I think much of my thought of the way to fix this has to do with stating your values, and then intentionally living in to them. For instance, I know that next week I’m going to be away on our high school mission trip, so this week I’ve made sure to block off 1 on 1 time for each person in my family. As is always the case, to say yes to something is to say no to something else. Saying yes to a couple of hours with my son this morning means that I have to say no to a little bit of extra sermon prep time. Saying yes to a date with my wife on Friday night means I might have to pack a wee bit earlier for the trip. But before any of that can happen, I at least need to sit down and name my values, prioritize my time, and make sure that I’m saying no where I need to so that I can say yes to the things that matter to me in this season.
What are you saying no to so that you can say yes to something else? What’s been keeping you busy these days?