It can all be so demanding.

I should be resting because my knee is still acting up but the dishes NEED to be done today. I get up and do the dishes and I see the mountain of laundry that needs to be washed (before I have zero pairs of socks in the morning). I forgot to move over laundry… again. It will need to be re-washed first. Then guilt sets in about not playing with the kids. They are only little for so long. My oldest needs someone to go out and practice with. I’ve been at work today. They’ve already had so little of me. I haven’t blogged in a few days and should probably hop on and do so. A text I haven’t read returns to the front of my brain. There’s always something I “should be” doing.

There will always be something that asks for my time. It can all begin to feel as overwhelming and the water when we start to drown. I can feel discontentment and irritation creeping in. I begin to run at a pace that is unrealistic and I find myself burnt out on the floor next to a Bible that sat unopened for three days. I sit in the shade in my back yard and begin to ponder how I got here. I should know better by now. I know myself. I know my habits. Yet one thing keeps coming to mind…

I should be doing something else.

We’ve created this idea of “perfection”. We idolize being “done”. Empty baskets. Empty sinks. Completely checked off task lists. The word should carries a certain weight to it. This constant state of being behind or unfinished. We weren’t meant for this. We weren’t meant to be frantically running from one task to the next.

In Psalm 90:12 Moses prayed “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”.

We are not limitless. We have limited days, limited energy, limited time. If God makes everything perfect, do we not think that this was on purpose? I’m a do-er. I love a good completely checked off task list. I wrongfully try to do it all, be everything. I read a sentence in one of my studies.

Jesus was never hurried.

I sit and ponder this because if anyone had a reason to be overwhelmed or hurried, it’s Jesus. Crowds pressed in. People constantly asking Him for healing of some kind. and yet, He moved with an intentional presence. It’s a rhythm. It’s presence, not pressure.

I think it’s easy to laugh at Martha in the story in Luke 10 where Mary and Martha welcome Jesus to their home. Mary sits as His feet as Martha is busy preparing and serving and simply doing all of the things she THINKS she needs done. She finally says the thing that is honestly more relatable than we’d like to think… “Lord don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work myself?”. I imagine myself passive aggressively cleaning the kitchen and grumbling that I feel like I’m the primary person who cleans or does school or intimated playing with kids. Then bursting out in my head with the same sentiment of “why am I doing this alone. There’s so much to do. Shouldn’t they be helping me?”. They being my husband, kids, co-workers… whoever is relevant to the task I am trying to complete. I’m sure you know that Jesus informs her that her sister has actually done what is most important. Please hear me, the work is still important. But she was so consumed by what she “should be” doing that she missed the moment she was actually in.

The problem isn’t my dishes or the laundry or the text messages or to do lists or the playtime with the kids. It’s that we are always somewhere else. At the next “should be”.

The moment we are in right now matters.

Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men”.

When our work becomes the worship, the pressure to do everything with perfection disappears.

And then we have to have grace for the unfinished. God never measures our faithfulness by our fully checked off to-do lists. It doesn’t make us any more or less worthy. It doesn’t make us any more or less “put together”. More often than not, the most faithful thing we can do is to simply be present where God has placed us in that moment.

Not everywhere we think we should be.

Just here…

Under The Sun.