Productive unproductivity

the monthly letter

I’m a bit slow already.

By that, I mean that I don’t think of myself as living fast-paced or having exceptional hustle. I keep pace with others who are thoughtful about not cramming their lives with too many activities or filling their schedules with ingredients for burnout. I have a bedtime, and I say “no” more often than “yes.” But still — there’s basketball practice and ballet, book clubs and birthday parties, girls’ weekend plans and field trips.

But still … is right.

I feel my heart rate rising when I have oncoming signs of sickness — what if I can’t show up for what I’ve already planned? And I notice things I rarely see otherwise when I choose to power down the normal, average-paced life I lead.

It’s enough to make me wonder: what might be found if I spent much more time on the other side of normal, average-paced living? “Average-paced” from twenty years ago — when we didn’t hold supercomputers in our hands and have hundreds of parenting books informing our intentionality, and it wasn’t at-all-average to see several specialists for each child or have dozens of people in a day informing our purchases (that we could then have land on our doorstep in five hours) — isn’t what it is today.

So do we just keep moving with today’s “average”, all the while saying: ‘This is just life’?

Two vignettes lead me to think perhaps not:

Though my family is most certainly on the mend after some years of sickness, I found myself back in bed twice this winter. Schedule cleared (because it had to be), and my mind unable to think much beyond reading a popcorn novel and noticing the way the trees outside my window look in winter, I was unproductive for days each time.

But it was as if I were revisiting an old beloved town I had lived in, during those days of being sidelined. Life happened without me — little kids were fed, big kids had heart-bleeds, and someone applied the bandage, posts I’d already written slid into your inbox, and others I planned to write simply didn’t get written. The sun rose and set, rose and set … and my heart slowed to notice it outside my window. I accidentally prayed more and became a bit more attentive to the few things in front of me (the little girl who needed to climb up into my bed and snuggle, and the big girl who needed to process her day at work). And I wondered …

Why the speed? What do I gain from it?

Sickness and snow days, they give us what we couldn’t do every day: we witness our lives in slow motion … and perhaps find the fertility there.

And then there was this other Wednesday — not a day when I was sick in bed, but a day when I left my phone zipped into my fanny pack and walked for miles without input or output at about a 19-minute-mile pace. My heart rate didn’t rise. I didn’t sweat or reach Zone 2 (didn’t even reach Zone 1). I accomplished nothing … but maybe everything.

I noticed the river beside the trail was half-frozen, and I watched timid geese navigate what had been their bathtub days before. I remembered that my heart was a bit achy — the day before, I noticed I was on edge, but hadn’t a moment to consider why. A ha, I thought as I walked in silence, this buried hurt was the splinter. I thought about growth I’d seen in a child, slow enough I’d barely caught it, but notable enough when life was quiet that I couldn’t miss it. And I dreamed a little bit … always a sign that my heart has been buoyed by Him. I accidentally prayed more than I would on a day crammed with efficacy.

You might call each of these days idle. Book reading and lazy strolling. Bird watching and daydreaming … chasing the sunset with my eyes … empty space.

But both forms of slow were, in fact, a workout for my interior life.

Being forced into slow by our limitations or enforcing slowness upon ourselves — no matter the catalyst — initiates a weakness that lifts us right out of our twenty-first-century hustle and into the reminder that our highest goal in life is to be a child.

“And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:2-4

There is a world waiting for you and for me, one that is curiously attentive to the most important things — and, dare I say, it is wildly productive … but perhaps not in the way we are used to. And I keep finding there are two ways to get there: either He leads me into a forced slow through life’s disruptive and yet gracious limitations … or He dances around my free minutes as I read about the pace of His life with this thought:

actively pursue the slow in your life … and watch to see what comes of it.

So, this year, I am.

{If you want more on this topic, The Gift of Limitations is a deeper dive, and it’s also my favorite of all the books I’ve written because I just keep needing to live it.}

Until next month,

Sara