Wednesday, June 8, 2011

"I just want time to do my one life well"

I have been reading AnnVoskamp's "One Thousand Gifts" where she challenges herself to live a life of eucharisteo (thanksgiving) by writing down 1,000 little gifts from God in every day life.  The premise behind it is the way to true joy is to give thanks.  I have not finished it yet, but it is challenging me.  Perhaps it could challenge you too.

  Here is an excerpt from one of the chapters:
    Because this is the way I have lived.  From the time the alarm first rings and I stir on our pillows touching, stretch over his bare back and check those relentless hands keeping time on that clock.  The time, always the time, I'm an amateur trying to beat time.  The six kids rouse.  We race.  The barn... and hurry.  The breakfast... and hurry!  The books, the binders... and hurry!  In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear.  I have done it.  I do it still.  Hands of the clock whip hard.  So I push hard and I bark hard and I fall hard and when their wide eyes brim sadness and their chins tremble weak, I am weary and I am thin clear skin, reflecting their fatigue, about to burst, my eyes glistening their same sheer pain.
     The hurry makes me hurt.
     And maybe it is the hurt that drives us on?  For all our frenzied running seemingly towards something, could it be that we are in fact fleeing- desperate to escape pain that pursues?
     Whatever the pace, time will keep it and there's no outrunning it, only speeding it up and pounding the feet harder; the minutes pound faster too.  Race for more and you'll snag on time and leak empty.  The longer I keep running, the longer the gash, and I drain, bleed away.
     Hurry always empties a soul.
     And it's those six souls there that I love, those six under spruce trees, there out my window.  Twelve arms gathering fallen cones.  Twelve legs bent.  The Boy-Man's arms rake a pile of dead grass, winter's refuse.  The Tall-Girl tucks Little-One's blowing wisps of blonde under spring hat.  Two little boys bent, tossing cones into pail, their heads touching in joke and I see their faces laughter light, their shoulders shaking in fun.  And oh, I know the sound and I smile.
     I speak it to God: I don't really want more time; I just want enough time.  Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, driven, or wild to get it all done- yesterday.
     I just want time to do my life well.
Can anyone relate?  Or is it just me?  Take time to breathe in all of God's blessings today!

1 comment:

  1. LOVE this book! Thanks for the reminder and continued inspiration!

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