KELSIE PETERSEN | Contributor and a Boy-Mom |
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about time. It’s the thing I never seem to have enough of, and just when it seems I may have a spare moment to exhale, five hours worth of activity are added into the remaining three hours of the day. What started out as “just a few weeks” of back to back obligations and tasks to complete has turned into nearly five months (less a one-week forced hiatus due to a health issue), with what seems to be no end in sight. Each morning, it seems, I wake up yearning for the next bedtime, just hoping I can get to the end of the day having accomplished “enough” to keep the list that keeps growing from the bottom at bay. Even sitting down to write this brief blog entry has turned into a feat of juggling schedules and taxi rides and basketball games. In the in-between moments, when I’m not panicking that I’m going to forget or be unable to do something very important, I am reminded of a long-standingly frustrating relationship with time. While I don’t think it’s necessary to tie all of my internal struggles back to my formative years in Adventism, it is an interesting place to look, as the first 25 years of my life were, indeed, integral in shaping how I have viewed myself and the world around me.
Today I was feeling particularly irritated about the passage of time.
Today I was feeling particularly irritated about the passage of time. I was SUPPOSED to have a big chunk of time—hours, in fact—to write. I was SUPPOSED to have time to check in on my part time, remote job, to get ahead of deadlines coming at the end of the month. Instead, I had to get up early, take a family member to the hospital to get checked out (not begrudging that, of course), come home, squeeze in a chiropractor appointment, take the kids to school very late, return home to shower, back to the hospital for a pickup, then home to get supper prepared so it was ready to feed people after my youngest’s basketball game.
By the time all of that was done, I had 90 minutes left to write and no mental energy. As I drove to pick up my older two sons from school, feeling irritated, my very least favorite song came on the radio. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, perhaps the instrumentation and overall presentation feel “hokey” to me (apologies to anyone who loves this song), but as I listened to the song, very aware of my irritation with life—and with the song—I really heard some of the words for the first time. I was unable to find the song online, but the phrases that stuck were “these are my holy moments—moments with You” and “invading my normal,” while the song spoke of a mother of young children, feeling caught in the repetitive monotony of life and meeting the needs of those around her. My days of young children are over (two of my three sons are over 6 feet tall, the third is not far behind), but I have found this phase to be even more demanding of my energy and my emotions than the young ages were, in many ways. Adding in more “outside” demands than I’ve had before, I’ve been left feeling stretched thin-to-unraveling—and unsure how to navigate these waters, with nothing able to be removed from my plate.
Shaped In Fear of Failure
While growing up in Adventism, before I was born again at the age of 12, I remember having a distinct sense of un-surety, of never being certain of having done “enough”. The Adventist belief in the investigative judgement produces an awareness of instability, of someone else “holding the keys” while you aren’t allowed to know or be certain of the reality of your own status. It is a most disorienting feeling, and the fear of feeling it again is something I have probably carried into my adulthood more than I often am aware of. I often catch myself worrying that there’s some secret way to magically “do it all,” and I just am not “allowed” to know it, or that the impossible amount of responsibility on my plate is somehow a “gotcha” to be able to point at my failure and inability to measure up.
One of my first pieces for this blog talked about peeling back the layers of the impact of Adventism on our lives and our selves. Maybe this is, 20 years after leaving, another layer for me. I admit I’m not writing this week from a place of “living” the answers. I feel that I have an impossible number of balls to juggle, and while I believe God is capable of anything, it doesn’t seem that He is choosing to intervene to remove any of them, or give me miraculous superpowers to always have the energy for all of the “to-do’s”, or all of the right words to say to those needing my relational support. Maybe this is a layer of letting the Lord Jesus be enough for me, no matter how much I don’t feel like I HAVE enough of me to go around. I don’t doubt for a minute His sufficiency in my eternal security, but I admit struggling to apply that to the lived practicalities of every day, especially as those practicalities pile and tower and wobble, threatening to topple.
And so, “my” best plan, the best way forward, is to hold on to the “holy moments,” to see the opportunity the Lord has brought my way in bringing me to them.
And so, “my” best plan, the best way forward, is to hold on to the “holy moments,” to see the opportunity the Lord has brought my way in bringing me to them. These are the moments when I am preparing for work in the morning, when I’m preparing lessons for the young students I teach on Mondays and Wednesdays, when I am writing emails or making phone calls to the homeschooling families I help support, when I am “encouraging” my three boys out the door to school in the morning, or “encouraging” them through their chore lists. Maybe it’s when I can sit in their bedrooms with them before bed each night and talk about their days, encourage them in their friendships and in their learning, or when we have discussions about church and community on our way across town on Sunday mornings, or about the sermon on the way home. It all sounds quite benign, and even a little idyllic, but as they have all piled together over the last months, it’s become easier to see the burden than the opportunity.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture, both edifying and comforting, is Ephesians 2. I have loved it for its clear gospel presentation, laying plain how all are dead in their transgressions and sins, until they are made alive with Christ. It reminds us that our salvation comes through grace, and this week I have noticed that it also reminds us that, while none of us is saved by our works, we HAVE been given good works to do, prepared for us by God, Himself, before we even knew it.
No matter how impossible my list seems, no matter how it seems to grow larger from the bottom than I am able to check off from the top, it is HIS list, the “good work” He has given me to do. And I can trust Him with it. †
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