The Drug Called Busyness

I'm posting excerpts from a piece I've been polishing up for a devotional book. What appears below is neither the author's original composition, nor (I expect) what we'll end up publishing, but something in-between. Consider this a sneak peek! This is from one Mark P., whom I don't believe I've ever met. Yet as I read about his life I see we have more than a few things in common...

He begins the piece by describing walking along a riverbank with his wife on a rare day off:

...Caught up in a frantic and busy schedule, I could not remember the last time I had purposefully gotten away for quiet and rest. Each day I felt more and more pushed, and I knew it was all of my own making.

Other concerns, some beyond my control, were also weighing heavy on my heart. My mother's cancer was not responding to treatments, college tuitions were due again, the business I was running in the Balkans was under some new pressures.

And a pattern of morning anxiety had started. Each day I woke startled, my heart pounding as if a fire alarm had awakened me. I had a horrible sense of impending doom. This so preoccupied my morning thoughts that I rushed through a quiet time with the Lord, thinking all the while, "I need to get going; I have so much to do. I have to get started!" The Lord did not get much quality time from me, and consequently, I was not really listening to Him much. Praying? Of course, but in a frantic, rote way. All the time, the twisting knot in my stomach that I had awoken with would get tighter and tighter.

My loving wife convinced me that I needed to talk to someone about this, and I finally shared it with a mentor who happens to be a professional counselor. His diagnosis? I had been stuffing down my hurts, concerns, and troubles pretty well on the surface, but they were beginning to fight their way out and refused to be stuffed any longer.

I had unwittingly been treating myself for this "illness" with a form of medication that surprised me when I found out. It wasn’t the usual type of drug so common in the world. Not alcohol, not narcotics, nothing "over-the-counter." I was self-medicating with a drug call "busyness."

In my quest to make the anxious feelings go away, I just stayed busy. As long as I kept it up it worked like an anesthetic for the pain. I seldom sat still for very long. When I did stop to take a break - perhaps watching a movie with my family - I would fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, only to wake up and repeat the cycle the following day.

My mentor’s recommended treatment was something quite different: decompression time. He told me I needed at least an hour a day of reflection, meditation, quiet time, and soul searching. No less. In other words, I needed to treat this illness with a healthy dose of daily Sabbath rest.

After more than half a century of living I now had to learn to really "do Sabbath" for the first time in my life. I had just ignored this command of the Lord. And it’s one of the "big ten"!

I began devouring every reading material on the subject, but I paced myself. This could not just be another busy activity; it needed to be an escape from activity.

In his book "The Rest of God" Mark Buchanan sums up what he calls the Golden Rule of Sabbath. It has two parts. The first part: "Cease from that which is necessary." In other words, "stop doing what you ought to do." And the second part: "to embrace that which gives life." Each of us knows the kind of things which we do because we ought to - or at least that's what we think. Likely we could each also conjure up a list of things that would relax us and bring enjoyment.

Simply stop doing the one, and make sure you do the other!

Easier said than done, but possible if you "renew your mind."

Years ago, I often traveled to China on business. The Chinese have one word made up of two written characters for the word "busy." Interestingly the two characters are "heart" and "killing." Busyness kills the heart. It is fraught with "ought to and should do" obligations.

Sabbath rest is like a balm or healing salve to the heart. It's a rest that comes only when we slow down enough…quiet ourselves so that we can hear Him and enjoy Him. There is much that the Lord wants to impart to us, things about Him that we can only experience if we truly have a Sabbath heart…and experience the rest of God.

Sez Who?

1. Questions

A few days ago one of the guys in my small group from church shared something that got all our attention:

“Lately I’ve been asking God a question – I don’t mean to sound like a heretic here but these are my actual words: ‘What would it look like, God, if you actually loved me?’

“The answer… well, you know that song in Fiddler on the Roof, ‘Do You Love Me?’ Tevye asks his wife that, and she’s amazed: all these years I’ve been cooking and cleaning for you, raising children with you, and you have to ask, do I love you?

“It’s been like that. We have food and water and shelter and money and health and relationships and all these other good things. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that those things are an answer to my question. His love shows up all around us, every day. We are so incredibly blessed.”

Being on sabbatical and of a pensive bent to start with, I have been asking similar questions. Oh, they are kind of scary questions, and I am reluctant to say them aloud. After all, they sound like accusations, the kind of thing I have no right to ask. I’d prefer to put on a happy face, to be the wise and serene sage instead of the angst-ridden, ungrateful adolescent. But it’s better to express these things than to push them away or stuff them down.

And I think I have reason to believe that God likes it when we ask these questions of him: it allows him to give us the great gift of an answer. Oh, he doesn't tend to answer the "why" questions very much. But he gives us answers all the same - if we are so bold as to ask and patient and humble enough to listen.

I find myself longing for consolation from the one whose perspective I can trust the most.

2. Does My Life Matter?

As befits that angsty adolescence I sometimes am, I have some questions about death, and some about love. (A teacher friend once told me those are really the only topics her teens ever write poetry about). And a lot of them seem to flow from this one: Do I matter? Does my life matter?

Everybody thinks it’s tragic when a mother or father with young children dies: those little ones depend on them! But nobody depends on me. I have no dependents. Some people’s obituaries are full of lists of survivors: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews and nieces and more. But if things go as expected, Megan and I will be the end of the line for our family. Will anybody remember me when I’m gone? If I weren’t here would anybody miss me? Does my life matter? Will I leave anything enduring behind?

I want to be spiritual enough to put aside selfish ambition and vain conceit and say, as Paul could, that to live is Christ and to die is gain, that I’d rather depart and be with Christ anyway. But I don’t know that I’m there yet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not depressed or thinking about throwing away this gift of life. I’m just thinking about how fleeting life can be and wondering what to make of it.

3. Sand and Waves

My friend S. sent me a picture from our trip to Indonesia a few years back - see above. It was taken at dusk one night when several of us went for a sunset walk along the beach. At first I thought about how nice it was to walk along the beach, and how I'd like to do that again, especially in a place as warm and pleasant. But then, my mind took an uncomfortable turn. It went to the cheesy Christian poem, “Footprints in the Sand.”

I realized that one of my objections to the metaphor is that it implies that the impact of one’s life might be just a row of footprints, swiftly washed away by the incoming waves. Is there nothing eternal about my life; is it just an ephemeral walk on the beach? Oh, I know, we could do worse than sand and sunset and gentle waves. But pleasure is not enough. I want something more.

4. What Wins the Debate?

Last week I spent a couple of days volunteering as a community judge for a speech and debate tournament. It was held in downtown Denver. They always need volunteer judges. I’d never done anything like that but both of the families I know who belong to hosting organization thought I’d enjoy the experience. I did, immensely!

After watching a debate or two I noticed that some of the competitors tended to lean on strong, clear statements that, while they made an emotional impression, didn’t always hold up under cross-examination and were fairly easily refuted by the other side (if the other side was not intimidated by the skills of their opponent).

In many cases they quoted lawyers or journalists or scientists without making it clear that the people they were quoting really had the experience or authority to support their statements. Sometimes, the debaters just said, “according to [name],” without making it clear who that person might be or what entity they might represent. As a judge, I had to take such evidence with a grain of salt.

To win the debate, you couldn’t just be the best or most forceful speaker, you had to make the strongest case, you had to martial the most compelling evidence - on the best authority.

It gradually dawned on me that this is true in my own life as well as in the world of debate. My accuser may tell me terrible things about myself and my worth… may present an abundance of evidence, all of it crystal clear, forcefully stated, and damning, to support the case that my life doesn’t matter or that I’m too screwed up to be of use to anyone. But where do those accusations come from? Are the sources credible? Do they hold up under cross examination? Or, strong as they sound, do they fall apart in contrast with the defending side which may make only simple, solid claims, but makes them on good authority, e.g., the authority of a brilliant designer, omniscient and omnipotent sustainer, merciful redeemer, etc.?

Psalm 103

¹ Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

² Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-

³ who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

⁸ The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.

⁹ He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;

¹⁰ he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.

¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;

¹² as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

¹³ As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

¹⁴ for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.

¹⁵ As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;

¹⁶ the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

¹⁷ But from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD's love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children's children-

¹⁸ with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.

¹⁹ The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.

Two More Years, She Said

What kinds of things do you want to inspect personally and bring home yourself, and what would you just as soon purchase online?

A quart of milk, a bouquet of daffodils, or a bag of frozen peas would generally go in the first category, I think. You can buy them online if you want to, but for more trouble and expense than stopping by the grocery store.

Many personal items are things I’d prefer to inspect in person. Too often, clothes ordered from a catalog or website seem to be the wrong shade or cut, after all, when they arrive. And in spite of the great deals at places like Zappos or eBags, they, too, sell items I would rather touch and see in three dimensions before making a purchase.

And (unless you’re buying something electronic which you can download) there’s a bit of a moral aspect to this kind of thing. Do we really want to opt for purchases that are shipped half way around the world, cheap for the consumer but expensive for the environment, over doing without or buying local?

Sometimes I’ll browse in a regular store and then buy online. It’s nice to have that option. I know bookstores and libraries won’t be going away anytime soon, so for books I go those places first. I’m quick to look, slow to purchase.

But I wonder how long we’ll have that option with the music industry. I was thinking about replacing some of the cassette tapes I’ve worn out with CDs. Yes, I know that statement marks me as pretty old fashioned on several accounts! But I still want something physical, particularly with my computer in the last year of its life; downloading music and burning my own CDs or other backups seems an inferior solution, compared with just getting music on CD.

My last online purchase of a used CD was muffed by an Amazon seller who instead sent me a paperback book called “Astrology on the Light Side of the Brain,” intended for a Wisconsin woman named Katherine. Oops. Sorry Katherine. I'll put it back in the mail.

So I went shopping. And found, well, hardly anything. Nobody seemed to carry more than a minimal selection. I wasn’t entirely surprised, but I struck up a conversation with a clerk and asked her for the industry scoop.

“They’re telling us to give CDs two more years,” she said. “Smaller sellers have stopped carrying them altogether, and larger sellers can keep them only if they sell them at a loss.”

I think I’ll keep buying CDs – at a modest rate – while I can get them. When they become passé I’ll tuck them away in the antique buffet where we store our LPs. Still play those sometimes, too. Do you?

Sabbatical Menu

"I think I'll get going," I said to the roommate as she drank her morning coffee.
"What do you have to do today?" she asked somewhat reflexively.

"Nothing," I answered, a grin slowly spreading across my face. "There's nothing I have to do today!"

It's a nice feeling. I don't suppose I could have that feeling all the time, but I'm cultivating a taste for it.

Here's one of those tips some of you don't need and others can't imagine adopting, but I'll throw it out there in case there are some who could use it.

I'm not making to-do lists. Nope. Whenever possible, I'm making menus: list of possibilities. Creative ideas, fun ideas, interesting ideas. What sounds satisfying, refreshing, filling? Put it on the menu. Then, particularly when bored, restless, or overwhelmed, look and see what's on the menu. Order anything that sounds good.

Go ahead: get dessert too!

Postscript: If, on the other hand, you find your to-do list inescapable - and perhaps unpalatable - consider Jon Swanson's 8 ways to get unstuck.

Sabbatical and the Pursuit of Rest

It's my sixth week of sabbatical. Some of you have been asking me how it's been going and what I've been doing, though regular readers may have picked up more than a few clues.

I’ll say this first: I never thought I’d be very good at this. It’s too much about resting, playing, and taking it easy. And I’m not like the old man who reportedly said, “Nobody is better at ‘nothing’ than I am!” I’m not in that league; I get depressed by three-day weekends. But some things are worth doing badly, and I have to say I think I’m getting better at dawdling, sauntering, musing, resting, and the like.

In fact, the more I’ve gotten a taste of the unhurried existence the less I've been afraid of it; the more I like it.

My convictions that living an overextended life is itself a wasteful way to live are also growing. I’d like to share more of what I’ve read and experienced on this topic, but have been reluctant to do so. After all, some of you are nap and vacation experts; others probably feel helpless, trapped by the busy-ness of your lives. Whatever I post about rest, and margin, and letting the Holy Spirit and not the pressures of life determine your priorities, I hope you’ll keep in mind that I’m just beginning to really learn these things. But I am learning.

Housewifery

It's been fun to do what I think of as "stay at home mom" things. It's unlikely I’ll ever be a SAHM, at this point, and certainly it would bring some significant challenges if I was. But I have enjoyed spending time cooking and baking, housework, etc. No actual babysitting, but I've been to the M. family's house to read aloud to their eight-year-old several times, and spent one recent afternoon watching the H. girls perform in a horse show. I've gotten together with friends for coffee or walks, puttered around the house, and even did a bit of "scrapbooking" of a sort.

Reading/writing

I’ve also been reading a lot, though that is pretty usual for me. Our church is doing this "Bible in 90 Days" thing which I've been helping facilitate, so I've spent a lot of time reading the Bible. I haven’t done a ton of writing; haven’t really wanted to. I’m thinking of trying out a daily journaling habit after Easter. And see where that takes me, ask God to chart the course. You know, I’m very much a thinker, and sometimes that gets me into trouble. Restful thinking – musing – is great. Worrying – fretting – is obviously not. Productive thinking is somewhere between the two, in terms of the energy input. I’ve got some stuff to process, certainly.

I don’t want to dive into it too deeply just yet. But soon, perhaps.

On the Social Front

Socially, this time has been a mixed bag. I still haven’t really seen people I wouldn’t probably be getting together with anyway, though looking forward to those times, enjoying them, and reflecting on them after, has sweetened them considerably. I’m hoping to spend time with a few families coming to Colorado from out of town on their spring break this week. And I think I will push myself to take a little more initiative than usual to make sure I have enough people-time each week.

One thing I’ve discovered about myself in doing this is that my usual tendency to spread myself too thin, costly as that is, has been a strategy for avoiding the disappointment of unexpected time alone. You know, it’s one thing to be given time alone as a treat, quite another to be left alone because you are a pathetic loser.

Oh, I know, you’d probably tell me I’m not a pathetic loser, but I seem to still have this fear within, that I am. Where does it come from? It’s probably some combination of enemies’ lies whispered in my ears, pressures from the media and the culture that have more influence on me than I like to admit, and unrealized childhood dreams of being a “popular” girl.

So now, with my usual coping strategy of keeping busy taken away, I find that fear resurfacing with a vengeance.

For example, this weekend there was a miscommunication with the small group I’ve been in for a long time, and lately facilitating. For the others, busy people who could really use a little more family time anyway, it was not such a bit deal I think. But I actually showed up at the house with my potluck dish (and lesson plan for the evening) in hand, looking forward to spending time with some of my favorite people. This really is the closest thing I get, here, to family time, so it's important to me. When they said, “Wait, didn’t you get the message? We're not meeting!” I was so embarrassed, so disappointed… I walked back out to my car and just sobbed and sobbed.

While I hope I can get to the root of that, talk to God about it, and get to a place of greater equilibrium about these things, I also acknowledge that living a simpler, more focused life – putting more of my eggs in one basket – may mean deeper disappointment when things don’t go as I’d like. Hmmm… worth it, to live a more intentional, less fragmented life? Yes, I believe so.

Not Like the Others

“[G.K. Chesterton] did so many other odd things that chances are nobody much noticed. He was continually losing his way, sometimes within a stone’s throw of his own house – or even in his own house, he claimed – forgetting things, losing track of what time or even what day it was, and drawing pictures on blotters, napkins, walls, virtually any surface that presented itself.

“An endless torrent of articles, reviews, essays, and poems tumbled from his pen, and often he composed them on the run – in a tea room, on top of a double-decker bus, standing in the doorway of a shop, or leaning against a wall scribbling in pencil in a penny exercise book or sometimes just on his cuff. He read as continuously as he wrote, and his friend Father John O’Connor, the prototype for Father Brown, the most famous of his fictional characters, said that when he finished with a book, it looked as though ‘It had gone through every indignity a book may suffer and live. He turned it inside out, dog-eared it, penciled it, sat on it, took it to bed and rolled on it, and got up again and spilled tea on it.'

“He was in his twenties when he started carrying a sword-stick whose blade sometimes slipped out and went clattering to the pavement as he moved about the London streets. His younger brother, Cecil, maintained that it was not an affectation but that he carried it because, in his romantic imagination, he always dreamed of being caught up in some amazing adventure in which he would need it for defending himself.”

Fredrick Buechner, in Speak What We Feel, pp. 85-86

Nichole's Story

I met "Nichole" the day before I moved into her parents' house. A pretty Uzbek girl in her early 20s, Nichole was fascinated by the foreigners in her city. She had a part-time job working for some of them, friends of mine, and lived in a house not far from them. I needed a local family to live with; her folks could use the rent money. They had the space, and the house was suitable. So we decided to give it a try.

Life hadn't been easy for Nichole. At the insistence of their mutual grandparents she had been married to a cousin in a nearby town several years before. He was carrying on an affair with somebody else and not very interested in the marriage - especially when the child born that first year (right on schedule) turned out to be sickly, not very much fun, and prone to fits of crying. When the baby needed serious medical care and her husband's family would not pay for it, Nichole felt she had no choice but to come home to her parents. They took her back in. After all, she could go out and work, helping to support the family, and they liked having a grandson around. Still, they waited, hoping the marriage could somehow be mended.

Nichole had been badly hurt. She was sure the neighbors disapproved of her. She couldn't see a way out. She had some false ideas about the glamorous life she might lead if she could get out of her neighborhood and live in a big city somewhere, maybe abroad. I knew that these ideas might cause some problems for me, and they did - so much so that I have not stayed in touch.

But clearly she needed someone to be her friend, love her, and help keep her out of trouble. It just so happened that that was what I needed, too.

So began what is probably the most significant cross-cultural relationships I've ever had. There have been others with whom I had more common ground, or learned more from, but nobody I had more fun with than Nichole, nor anyone with whom I experienced more of what differences in culture can really mean - on a gut level.

I found another young woman to be my "formal" Uzbek tutor, but I tried out everything I learned on Nichole and her family and learned as much from them as from anybody. They took me places, and helped me learn my way around, and shared their lives with me. They made sure I was properly clothed and fed and cared for. Without them I would have been helpless, foreign; with them, I could experience at least a bit of what it is to be an insider.

Nichole enjoyed showing me around, sometimes showing me off. And having me around made her feel a bit more glamorous. She enjoyed telling people I was her sister. I remember the time she took me to get my hair cut and then starting boasting to a man in the salon that she and I were with the CIA (!) She liked to carry my laptop computer if we went someplace together - pretending she was an American businesswoman and it was hers. Sometimes we watched movies on it, or listened to music. Before long my Uzbek was better than her English, but we usually communicated in a mix of English and Uzbek words, Uzbek grammar.

I remember sneaking off and buying bananas - an expensive imported food - at the local bazaar, and sharing one with her on a picnic. She was as delighted as I was, having not tasted one of these luxuries in years. It was as good as she remembered, but she stared at the remains for a long time, trying to figure out how characters in the cartoons could slip on a banana peel. How we laughed about that! I was too embarrassed to bring out the other two bananas I had in my bag, having bought one for each of us on the picnic. One seemed like such a splurge.

Sometimes being Nichole's friend presented painful ethical dilemmas. I remember the day she came to me for advice about where to conceal the answer key she'd purchased, a sure way to ace the entrance exams for getting into college. Or her agonizing over how to pay the $5/month to put her son, less than two years old, into preschool - which in that society was considered the right thing to do for kids as soon as they were weaned. And what about her idea to leave her son with her parents, come to America (say, on a tourist visa) and stay to make a new life for herself? She was sure that would be the best for everybody. It seemed to me at the time that if I gave her any encouragement in that direction it would mean betraying her family, as well as betraying my own country.

And sometimes our worldviews clashed. I remember the day I came home and Nichole told me our house was haunted. The witch-doctor had told her mother we had "djinn" and needed to get the place exorcised, basically. I also remember the day her estranged husband came hoping to see his son. Nichole became hysterical, begging me to take him away and hide him in someone else's house so he wouldn't be kidnapped. She thought the father had no right to even see his son if he wasn't going to support the two of them, such as by buying them a flat to live in. This was so different from the way I was used to seeing marriage, custody, and parenting that I didn't know what to make of it.

Enamored with foreign men, she fantasized about meeting one who would marry her and take her away. Never mind that she wasn't, technically, divorced; who needed to know? None of the handful of foreigners in our city was likely to take advantage of her in this but I was afraid she might discover the ways she could meet one on the Internet.

Well, it's been years now. The friends who had arranged for me to live in Nichole's city have all left, and my ability to speak and write the language have waned considerably. I had never answered the many letters appealing for money and other help. So I don't know much about what has happened to Nichole. But last I heard she had reunited with her husband and they were living in the capital.

I hope she is well.