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ave you ever noticed that there are some people who seem to never forget anything? They’re those crazy robot-types that remember every appointment, every commitment, and every conversation they have ever had. They are the ones that can make a dentist appointment for themselves for a year from now and actually remember it and show up 15 minutes early.
On the flip side, have you ever noticed that there are people in the world that seem to just glide through life, never worried about anything? They miss meetings, forget to call you back, and often don’t even seem to care when they drop the ball on something they were responsible for. If you feel like this particular paragraph is speaking to you, I have to admit. You drive me crazy. I love you, but you drive me crazy.
You see, I am a member of the club that belongs with the first example. I am the crazy robot. I can tell you right now that I have a dentist appointment in six months, and I promise I will be there, without reminders, at least 15 minutes early.
As I am beginning this journey as a writer, I am finding that I am a recovering alarm addict. That’s right. I am admitting to you in this moment that I have spent decades addicted to my alarms on my iPhone. Truth? It’s not just the alarms. I will be bluntly honest with you: I have a color-coded, complicated calendar on my phone that is synced to the rest of my family, I have a paper planner from Erin Condren that holds every, single life event that we have done or plan to do in 2024, and on top of that, I currently have 21 alarms turned on in my alarm app. Not all of them will go off today. Some of them are set to go off every Sunday night, or Wednesday morning, or whatever other reminders I need throughout the week.
If you think 21 is a lot, remember that I told you I am a “recovering” alarm addict. 21 is not much compared to what I used to have before I decided to quit my job and enter into a new season where my life is much slower and less complicated.
You see, I have been a public-school teacher for the past 25 years. I realize that that is more years than many of my readers have even been alive. Recently, I decided to leave education to pursue a different path. This change in career also brought the need for me to change my rhythms.
As a teacher, my day started when my alarm went off at 5:30 in the morning. I had to shower, do my hair and makeup, put on “real clothes”, and be ready by 6:30 when the rest of the house started waking up. I would then hustle through my days where I was never allowed to do the same thing for more than 44 minutes at a time because that’s how long the class periods were at the school where I taught. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom when I needed to because children cannot be left unsupervised.
Anyone that knew “teacher me” has either seen or experienced my alarm system on my phone. There were dozens of alarms that went off during the day that signaled things like meetings, the end of class periods, and once there was even an alarm to remind me to eat the Peanut M&Ms that my boss had given to me as a thank you gift. I had to set the alarm because I was so busy chasing my schedule every day that I had forgotten to eat them for a whole week. This system of alarms started at 5:30 AM to wake me up. The last one went off at 10:00 PM to remind me to lock up the chickens before I went to bed.
It was exhausting.
It was necessary.
I don’t know a single public-school teacher that isn’t nodding along right now because they too, have their own system of madness that helps them survive the day. Y’all, it isn’t just teachers, either. There is a reason that so many jobs come with the need for secretaries, assistants, and teams of people working together for common success. There is a reason the planner industry is booming. There is a reason that Apple has that crazy alarm app in the first place. It’s because when we are hustling through our days, we need help.
That level of insane hustle was my normal for all of my adult life. Until recently. It felt so good the day I finally cleaned out my classroom and deleted all those alarms. It felt almost like I was breaking chains I had been carrying like Jacob Marley carried in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story. There is nothing more freeing than giving an adult permission to go to the bathroom whenever they want. Ha! I joke, but not really. I had spent 25 years hustling. I was ready for a break.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to discourage you from considering a career in education. I am not knocking the public school system or any school system, for that matter. I LOVE school. I am so thankful and proud of the years I spent in the classroom. If you are considering a career in education I fully encourage you to go for it. It will be the most rewarding career path ever. Just make sure you start thinking about opening up that alarm app on your phone before you sign your first contract. You’ll thank me later.
All I’m saying is that there was a level of hustle in my life for 25 years that I couldn’t seem to control. In my book, Mom Talks, there is a chapter called “I’m Just So Busy” where I dive deeper into the worldly mindset that “busy is a blessing” when it actually seems that busy is really just the enemy’s way of distracting us from our God given purpose in life.
But I digress…… My point is this. I. Was. Busy.
And exhausted.
When I finally got off the merry-go-round of my life and stayed home, boy was it challenging.
Not going to my job every day was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It took me weeks and weeks, months even, to find a rhythm in my new season. Honestly, I still haven’t quite worked through this new way of experiencing my life.
I know what you’re thinking, “Poor little baby. She had to stay home, live in sweats, eat whenever she wanted to, and be alone in a house for hours where the sunlight pours through the windows of her sunroom and the cats and dogs lay lazily around while she cries about how hard her life is…..”
I’m not complaining. My life right now is an absolute dream. I am so thankful that God has given me this opportunity to live this life of peace and slow pace.
The hard part wasn’t the environment. The hard part was finding value in my new rhythm. I struggled to feel productive. I struggled to feel like my life had any value now that I wasn’t running a million miles per hour. I struggled at night when my husband would ask how my day was.
I felt lazy. I felt like I was cheating at life. I felt guilty that my husband and kids were all out hustling while I was at home, doing the kinds of chores I used to get done on a Saturday afternoon.
You see, I had tied my value as a person way too closely to things I was accomplishing every day instead of tying my value to who God said I was. I believed that I only had value if I was hustling and producing and successfully running around checking boxes from my first alarm to my last. The truth is, though, God never cared about the boxes. He cares about me as His daughter. Not what I can DO, but WHO I AM in the Kingdom, a daughter of the King.
Being productive as the world sees it isn’t what God wants from me. It’s never been what He wanted from me. I believe it’s why He has me in this season of sitting still. I believe he wants to show me that I was never valuable because of my hustle.
I am learning that there is a rhythm in every season of life, and it’s our job to settle in to where God plants us, find a rhythm, and focus on working toward what we believe God wants us to accomplish in that season.
Eccleasiastes 3: 1-8 says: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
I would add that there is a time to hustle and a time to sit still. I would also add that only God knows when these times are appropriate for your life.
How then will I know? I’m glad you asked. You don’t have the ability to know. Only God knows. The only way you will know when to do each of these things is to stay close to Jesus. Not just on Sunday mornings in the pew next to your mom because she made you go. I mean close like a best friend. Because if you are best friends with Jesus, then you will know when to do each of the things listed above because He will tell you. He will tell you when it’s time. He will be your help and guide. He will gently nudge you toward who you are supposed to be in every season of your life.
This verse is humbling to me because there are some things on this list that make me feel like a bad person when I do them. I mean….. a time to uproot? A time to kill? A time to refrain from embracing? A time to give up? You mean to tell me that giving up can be Godly?
Yes. The Bible says right here in front of you that giving up can be Godly in certain seasons. I am living proof that giving up can be Godly. I just walked away from a 25-year teaching career, and I don’t really even understand why God called me to do it. But here I am, giving up on something I spent my entire adult life building, and guess what…… it turns out that I am more than just a good teacher. I would have never written a book, if I hadn’t given up teaching.
We never know what God has planned for our lives. The only way you’ll know when to do those hard things is by staying in constant communication with Jesus. Let him call the plays, and you just keep moving forward.
If this scripture passage is right, then I have been so wrong to tie my value as a person to the amount of hustle and productivity I can cram into my life. If this scripture passage is right, this new life I am now learning to live is just as blessed by God as I was in my former life as an alarm addict.
My value is not in my ability to hustle….. and neither is yours.
I hope you find a moment of peace in your day today. I hope that you take just a few minutes here and check in with your best friend, Jesus. He has a game plan for the rest of your day, week, and all of your future. Jesus is even more reliable than your alarm app on your phone, and that’s saying a lot.
Whatever season you find yourself in, I pray that you do it wonderfully. I pray that you give yourself the grace and mercy to make mistakes. I pray that you experience all of the seasons that Eccleasiastes 3 talks about. With a life lived in so many diverse experiences, you will grow up to be an incredible person with so much wisdom gained through each of the seasons of your life. Sit back, relax, and find a rhythm in the season that God has placed you in today.
Literally