365 Project Day 233: Stepping out of Hurry

Canon 5D Mark ll, 50 1.2L, 3.5 aperture, 1/13 shutter, 100 ISO

I dipped my toes in the current today, knowing the hurry it holds for me. How I hate hurry. It steals joy and takes life, one breathless moment at a time.  Does it have to be this way? With two daughters preparing to leave home in a week, it feels like it does. There is so much to be done. But is hurry really about getting things done? I find that hurry rarely helps me accomplish anything. It feels more like an internal bully, pushing and shoving me past all the present joy, to some blurry, unattainable goal. Hurry is just a superficial vehicle we board to escape the present as we are lulled to believe we are doing something important. The whole premise of hurry is a lie, a fallacy. We will not accomplish anything that means anything through hurry. Period.

This is my declaration, my statement of intention for this week: I will not hurry. I will breathe in the moments and taste them slowly, each one a gift. I will laugh, be grateful, love, hug, kiss, cry, pray and worship.

As tempted as I am to close myself to the pain of letting my girls go, I will position the doors of my heart to stay open. To stay present.

As Ann Voskamp says in her book One Thousand Gifts, ” When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of all me here. I can slow the torrent by being all here.”  And also,  ” When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and… holy. Here is the only place I can love Him.”

She has it right. I am not running out of time. I am gathering eternity when I open and rest in the ever present I AM.