If a life is lived, but not remembered or recorded, is it truly lived?
If a life is lived, but without impact or imprint upon the surrounding world, is it truly lived?
Mere existence...going thru the motions, of duty & response, perhaps even obedient & loving service...is this truly living?
The imprisonment of busyness steals my very life away.
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I do not write because I do not have time. And I do not have time because I fear the judgement and consequential shame of imperfection. Handicapped by the heavy chains of this busyness-prison, I live day-upon-mundane-day of mere existence.
What am I so busy with?
Volumes of good intentions lay before me. Yet I turn page after empty page of unwritten story. There are margins & outlines & schedules, and even the occasional burst of truncated narrative.
Gaping blank spaces reflect the forgetable dailyness of dutiful loving, living, & serving; chapters absent of adventure or storyline. The chains of busyness keep me writing and rewriting - preface, introduction, preliminary chapters. When does the enthralling tale begin? Where is the epic adventure?
I think I will...
We ought to...
I should...
Maybe we can...
So much good to be done, yet I am afraid to commit, afraid of the high cost and hard work and ever-looming risk of failure. I dwell in these empty pages, paralyzed in this busyness-prison, chained to self-inflicted perfectionism.
"Therefore, to him who knows to do good, and does not do it, to him it is sin." -James 4:17
And yet...
is this life, filled with practical, vital, mothering duties...
is this not the very 'good' I am called to do?
Or
is it -
as a striving to please and pacify and perfect -
mere existence?
For what is my life?
"It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away." - James 4:14
I think, perhaps, the attempt at concise answers for the new year is little more than drivel;
superfluous words of vacuous fiction,
self-gratifying attempts to fill the empty life-pages with ephemeral meaning.
And then again -
Perhaps the grappling for God's will, in itself, IS the epic.
"Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live, and do this or that.'" - James 4:15
So then, if the Lord wills,
we will live,
and we will do...
and strive to do the good He calls me to.
But how? For all the empty pages, and the unkept intentions?
For all I've left undone,
For all the doing that has been mere existence,
bound in the chains of busyness-prison,
He gives more grace.
For the longing and the hope,
For the fear of failure,
For the grappling, with no easy answers,
For breaking the chains of perfectionism
and fleeing these busy-prison walls,
He gives more grace.
linking up with Lisa-Jo at The Gypsy Mama
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Thanks for 'listening,' friends. This post came almost word-for-word out of my midnight-hour journal entry on the 2nd day of the new year. As I've pondered & digested the final chapters of the book of James...I've been hit with the shallowness of so many life-pursuits, and the overwhelming depth of God's calling. How to live in this world, and yet remain unspotted?
How to pursue intentionality, yet release my grip on the treasures of this culture?
How is it that simplifying our lives...makes things so complicated...?
There are no easy answers. And so I trust in the giving of His grace.
What are you grappling with, as we embark on a new year?
