{as we look toward the fall} something I'm doing to lean in to my limits

Consider joining me.

In the one hour since I sat down with my computer this afternoon, I have replied to emails from our health practitioner, filled out paperwork for my daughter’s ACTs, voxed Nate about a situation at home that needs Dad’s attention, put in my milk order from our local farmer, corresponded with my girls’ ballet teacher, ordered three birthday gifts, corresponded with a doctor regarding a form for one of my children, scheduled our oven repair (it’s been broken since last October — this is the 7th repair attempt), and taken my afternoon supplements.

The tasks in front of me seem to expand as I complete others.

And I’m not alone.

Life isn’t getting quieter or simpler. My fight for margin feels like it requires fisticuffs, not a pencil on the page of my planner. And I’m just as at-risk of drowning in the soul as the CEO who works 70-hour work weeks.

You, too?

For years, I’ve managed the ongoing onslaught of activity by multitasking. It wasn’t that I chose to do that, but more like I had developed a tic. I needed to sauté onions for dinner and I also had a message from the children’s occupational therapist that felt pressing. I could listen, respond, and take notes with one hand — and stir with the other. As I noticed the (seeming) efficiencies that came from multitasking, it was only natural to layer activity on top of activity — why not? How else am I to match my capacity to the growing need?

And then, one day several years ago, when I suspected that my growing task list (though managed one-way-or-another) was taxing my relationship with God, I started a little experiment that I called the “productivity fast.” I limited my list. I limited myself. I began to think of life through the lens of what I was once capable of, not what I could cram into a single afternoon, and I pared back my expectations of myself. I gave myself short lists and I scheduled “wonder hours” to do nothing but walk in the woods, talk to God, and read poetry.

This felt luxurious for the mom of (then) 6 … or even the mom of 2. Who has time for this? I thought at first.

Until I did it and saw how it gave my soul oxygen.

I wouldn’t have called that luxurious fifteen years earlier, and not just because I had many fewer kids. Fifteen years ago, we didn’t text at stoplights, or pay bills while in line at the grocery store, or talk to our moms on the phone while signing up for soccer online at the same time. The extent of my multitasking, then, was chatting on the phone while cooking dinner.

Downtime has become a luxury in our minds, not the necessity that it really is.

So, as we’re spending the month looking at what the Word says about weakness and God’s thoughts toward us in the human frames He gave us — frames that require us to sleep at least seven hours and eat meals slowly to digest them and tend to our bodies when they’re run down — I thought it only natural for me to revisit how I’m doing in regards to pushing productivity in exchange for leaning into the presence of God.