Sputtering

Today has been one of those days where I have no idea what’s going on. I woke up late. I was still in my pajamas at 11:30. I sat on the couch wondering what was happening today, as my boys tackled and kissed each other and had not an alphabet’s-worth of structured play. By the time I knew it, I was making lunch and cleaning smashed sweet potato off the floor.

All day, no matter what I was doing, I felt like it wasn’t quite what I should be doing. I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done, but I wasn’t resting either. I HATE that. I hate when I don’t feel like I’m being productive, when I don’t have a plan and feel like I’m riding in a sputtering minivan. But after I got my two kids down for naps, I was washing out my one-year-old’s pink sippy cup at the sink, looking out at the nest which a robin has happily built in our only excuse for a tree, and I thought to myself, You know what, I’m glad I don’t know what I’m doing; maybe it’s ok that I’m not being totally efficient today, that I feel strange and off kilter. Because Isn’t that where God does most of his work, anyway? I felt a flutter of excitement about the things God might be doing in the inefficiencies, because they are things that I could never create or control, things that only he could do. What a mystery to think that he is doing something good and beautiful beneath the frazzle.

The other day, my sweet friend wrote me an email detailing all of her feelings as of late. It was gorgeous, one of the best things I’ve read in months. She didn’t know that, lately, I’ve been questioning the reason for all of my empathy and all of my feelings, whether they are any use to anybody. Sometimes I’d like just to get through my days like a regular, down-to-business individual. I’d like to be efficient, organized, productive and clean-shaven, always. But I read her email and realized, maybe my emotions are beautiful, something to behold and hold and go over with the tongue like an expensive dessert. There is nothing efficient about my emotions or my empathy. Sometimes they just help me connect with other humans better. Sometimes they help me to pray. Sometimes they overwhelm me and lead me to the lap of God. I don’t need to worry about what he’s doing with my emotions, or worry about the fact that I feel so much, or that I can’t see a precise connection between my empathy and my output. I just need to rejoice for the heart he has given me, and watch him gently bend it into an origami swan. My emotions are his, and I can pray that he will help me harness them and use them for his glory, but I might not always know what that glory is. I’m writing all of this, hoping it can sink into my sinkhole heart, just a little. Maybe it will take my whole life, but something has begun, and beginning is the most important.

All of this to say: efficiency is not the ruler of me. God is, beauty and truth and goodness are.

One time when I was in college, I felt overwhelmed at all of the dreams I had and everything I wanted to accomplish. I felt the Lord speak to my heart, and I started to cry because it was the opposite of everything anyone had ever said to me about clockwork. There is enough time, he said.

There is enough time.

What a shocker, knock my socks off, call me Rita. When I heard it, I knew it was true. There is enough time because he owns it, and the Father has given me what is his, through Jesus. Working in our strengths, being efficient because we know what we’re doing, that’s good at times, but it isn’t everything. If it were, there would be no art in the world, or laughter. God knows exactly what we need to be doing and when, and he works all for our good. That is why I don’t need to rush.

Let me trust this. Let me give back to him the little bit of time he’s given me and watch it billow like a sail and move me forward.