Admittedly, I have a hard time sitting still.  My mind is always racing ahead, and I simply must be doing something.  My husband has been a great help to my resting (Heads up:  my last post in this series will be about R-E-S-T), and we work on this together in marriage.  For instance, he loves to kick back and watch the Mariners.  I love my husband.  But - I have a hard time sitting to watch, well, anything (except maybe a war movie).  So…I took up knitting.  Now he’s happy with me curled up beside him while Felix Hernandez throws a curve ball, and I’m, well, doing something.  I didn’t always used to be this way. 

Growing up in the rural boondocks of Route 48 in Montana, I spent my childhood with mostly imaginary friends and reading to my dog.   While most of the peer group my age reminisce about growing up watching tv programs like the Brady Bunch and Partridge Family, we lived so far in the sticks they had to pipe in sunshine - let alone prime time or cable.  TV was a gray haze of fuzzy screen, and I must have been 7 when I gave up the mental effort of deciphering the blurred images.  My mother was a young widow, making ends meet by working full-time at the local State Mental Hospital.  Consequently, I had a lot of time to myself, and as a third generation Finn, spent it taking saunas, reading to my dog Pepper, and making snowmen.  The choices were few.  Organized sports weren’t an option and we didn’t have money for music lessons.  Except for the Bible drills at church, I don’t recall a single day of my childhood feeling busy or rushed or pressured.  

I would make up for that.  As time went on, God sovereignly edged me ever closer to the city.  Ultimately, it is His “fault” in sovereignly molding me, right.  It was like turning up the speed on a conveyor belt:  new choices sped by every day, and I reached for each and every one of them like that classic scene of Lucy in the chocolate factory.  As a new Christian, it became a downright addictive hustle.  What I didn’t fully recognize in the beginning of my Christianity, was the impact of the spiritual gifts I’d been given.  I was just a single mom, raising two children, working part-time, caretaking for a terminal brother in a city ten times bigger than any other place I’d ever lived, reading my Bible like a maniac and growing like crazy in my love for people.  I couldn’t get enough of this Jesus.  I’ll never forget the evening I pulled up in front of church and my little boy said, “Mommy, day and night, night and day, why are we always at church?”  He didn’t say it like “Oh, bother!  I hate this!”, it was said in the venacular of a 5 year old asking why is the sky blue, or why do girls have boobs.  Why are we always at church?  Some might fault me for that, but I was hungry, taking every opportunity to learn, read, grow.  I loved Jesus - on steroids.

“Come to me…”  Matthew 11:28  The questions that truly matter in life are remarkably few, and they are all answered by these words - “Come to Me.”  Our Lord’s words are not, “Do this, or don’t do that,” but - “Come to me.”  If I will simply come to Jesus, my real life will be brought into harmony with my real desires. … “and I will give you rest” - that is, “I will sustain you, causing you to stand firm.”  He is not saying, “I will put you to bed, hold your hand, and sing you to sleep.”  But, in essence, He is saying, “I will get you OUT of bed-out of your listlessness and exhaustion, and out of your condition of being half dead while you are still alive.  I will penetrate you with the spirit of life, and you will be sustained by the perfection of vital activity.”  Getting There, Oswald Chambers

When God calls any of His people to go to a place, they may rest assured that He has fully provided for them in His fore-determined purpose.  In hindsight, there have been times I have done WAY too much for sinful people-pleasing reasons while getting pats on the back and serving in church, and times I have also been smack in the furnace of  God’s 2 Much Too Busy will, and tongue lashed by church ladies.  At one particular heated season of (God ordained) life, I took a stress test in a Redbook magazine, and my score was over their highest stress level.  “I knew it!”, I told myself, “I’m going to have a nervous breakdown!”  I needed professional help!  A shrink!  A counselor!  A razor blade!  (That’s a joke.)  The only problem was, I had no money.  As I look back, this was where the rubber began hitting the road to my Chrisianity.  The Word started kicking in.  When I read Jesus was my “wonderful Counselor” one evening, I put down my Bible and said Okay God.  You brought me to this city.  I have 2 little kids.  I’m caring for a terminal brother.  My husband just left me.  I’m flat broke, and Redbook says the men in white coats will be coming any day.  You say you’re a Wonderful Counselor.  Okay, then.  You better fix me. 

Without going into all the detail of how Jesus spiritually preserved me and rescued me from the pitfalls of 2 Much Too Busy (as well as the nuthouse), suffice to say that Oswald has reduced it to the least common denominator:  Come to Me.  Bring your daily life, your calendar, your commitments, your giftings, to Jesus.  Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT rely solely on impulse, or reason, or balance, or comparing yourself to other women.  Sidenote / Heads up:  YOU HAVE A PROCLIVITY AS A WOMAN TO COMPARE YOURSELF WITH OTHER WOMEN.  Understanding this curse is a KEY to unraveling 2 Much Too Busy.  C-O-M-P-A-R-I-N-G our lives to the other women in the race is a huge pitfall and will be my next topic in this series.

Beware of spiritually reducing 2 Much Too Busy to “reason” and “balance”, as good as that sounds, there is a flip side.  As one theologian put it:  “Ah, my reader, the path of faith is utterly opposed to what we call ‘common sense,’ and you often will find it harder to crucify reason than you do to repudiate the filthy rags of self-righteousness.”  In my experience, there are plenty of self-righteous (including my own heart) to share pearls of what is “normal”, and what you should be doing or not doing.  Jesus says COME TO ME.  Should you be in that women’s group?  Come to Me.  Should I join this church?  Come to Me.  Should I serve on the PTA?  Come to Me.  Should I be working here?  Come to Me.  Should I go back to school?  Come to Me.  Should I ditch this?  Come to Me.  Close Christian community has given me excellent advice.  And close Christian community has given me terrible “common sense” advice, when compared to what Jesus said when I came to Him directly.  There have been times I have been exhausted doing two things, and energized after 10.  Currently, I’m in an excruciating spiritual season of waiting on the shelf.  Every time I check in with Jesus (and my husband) about doing something in several areas of life, the answer is a resounding NO.  And so, I wait.  Jesus must be behind the commitments, no matter what. 

Once you have officially Come to Jesus and His Word concerning your commitments and calendar, your conscience can rest.  Ambivelence tends to fade when you have been proactive.  I remember times when we were building our house that it seemed everything was going under.  There were many times we were exhausted with the midnight runs to Home Depot and being overbudget.  We were often spent, financially and emotionally.  But the one thing we always came back to was the weekend our family prayed in earnest about whether to go forward in the first place.  God clearly spoke to us, and it was GO FORWARD.  Even though there were many days that next 2 years that the commitment took its toll and we slid into second guessing, Jesus always reminded us of the day He said “This is the way, walk in it.”  Is. 30:21.  Ambivelence faded and our strength was renewed when we chose to believe God again.  We had Come to Him in the first place, and that was what mattered.  Eight years later, we have had endless opportunities for ministry here.  It was God’s business to exhaust us for a season, even if that meant spending the O’s time in ”unreasonable” trips to Home Depot.   God is hardly conventional.

Take a day, a weekend.  You fast.  You take time in silence and solitude.  You literally bring your paper July calendar and commitments to prayer.  None of July is yours, really.  Think about it:  Every minute of every day of every week, is graciously on loan from our God Almighty.  My desire is to glorify Him with that.  I can glorify him in Bible study, and I can glorify Him changing a diaper.  We gave up our rights, including our rights to spend time, when we came to the Cross.  It’s all God’s time now, on loan.  And as a Christian, its entirely His business how He chooses to spend “our” time.   Consciously acknowledging that before the calender month starts, has made all the difference for me.  “I want to serve you this month, Jesus.  My calendar is [pretty] blank.  This is Your month.  May you fill it with rest and work that glorifies You.  Grant me discernment.  Give me the power to say no, and Your strength to say yes.  Especially when life seems unreasonably boring, or full.  I trust this month to You, whatever that brings.  Amen.” 

I have friends who feel perfectly conscience free doing 2 extracurricular things a week because anything more overwhelms them, and I have friends who hold down jobs, good marriages, parenting and ministry commitments, also conscience-free.  You may be judged as lazy or weak, or you may look sinfully 2 Much Too Busy in the eyes of the earth, but God alone is the Author and Architect of your time.  He knows you and what you can handle - better than you do. 

My prayer the entire time I cared for my terminal brother was, “Oh, God, when its time to take him Home, please don’t take him on my watch.   Father, you know I couldn’t handle that.”  I prayed that the entire 18 months I cared for my beloved brother.  But guess who Jesus chose state side when He took him home.  At first, I was mad at Him for that.  It was hard.  But I came to see that God gave me strength to bear it, and I did handle it. God knew me better than I knew myself.  He always does.  I try to never rely on conventional wisdom when it comes to following Jesus, or spending “my” time.

Earnestly, honestly go to Him.  Be willing to make His changes to your calendar, even if your best friend will misunderstand.  You must be solely devoted, dependent, and submitted to Jesus and His call on your time.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God:  I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.”  Is. 41:10

His worn, baggy jeans and jacket looked dirty. By his graying hair, I judged early fifties, maybe slightly younger. He was holding a small cardboard sign that read, “God Bless you.” I wondered for a few moments what his life story was, what the events had been leading up to him taking up a post on this busy corner beneath the Ballard bridge.

I noticed the extra granola bar on my passenger seat and wondered if I should offer it to him. The light changed green and the car in front of me moved through the intersection. Any attempt to offer the bum breakfast now would not be well received by the line of traffic behind me. I moved through the intersection, and glanced at the digital clock on my car CD player. It read 10:58. I wasn’t worried. I knew of a spot I could park close to Mars Hill Church and run across the street in time to sit down before the band’s first song ended.

While waiting for a break in traffic, I glanced back down the block. He was still standing there. I could feel the granola bar staring up at me from its pocket in my bag, next to my Bible. Should I walk up the block and hand it to him? I thought. No, you shouldn’t, a girl once got raped under that bridge. It’s 11:00 in the morning, is there honestly any valid safety concern when there are dozens of people around? You’ll be late to church. It’s pretty inconvenient. Maybe he’ll still be there afterward, when I’m not in a hurry. Besides, one granola bar isn’t going to help anything. He needs more than a silly breakfast bar. Is he crisis homeless or chronic homeless or not homeless at all, and just taking advantage of people’s guilty consciences and generosity. STOP! Jesus, please teach me discernment when it comes to situations like this. 

I caught a break in traffic and walked into the sanctuary just in time to grab a seat before the band ended and Pastor Mark walked onto the stage. Mark greeted the congregation, prayed and introduced the sermon topic: Stewardship:God Gives. I found myself wishing I had taken the time to be late to church.

Throughout the next several hours, in his sovereign and gracious providence, Jesus revealed the deeper issues my heart had been struggling with and patterns of finding my security in wealth when it doesn’t even ultimately belong to me, patterns of feeling superior to the man on the corner.

Mark sums it up well in his sermon notes:

“Essential to the doctrine of stewardship is that everything ultimately belongs to God.  The great myths are that we own anything, that we deserve anything, that we can do anything good apart from God and that we are sovereign over our own lives. Nothing good that we have or do originates with us, it all comes from the hand of God as the Scriptures repeatedly and emphatically declare (Deuteronomy 8:17-18;Psalm 50:10; Haggai 2:8; James 1:16-18).”

A week later, I am still wrestling with these truths and the reality of how to walk in the fact that Christ is soveriegn and the only One solid enough for me to trust. I am not sure what I will do the next time I sense a prompting to share one of the blessings God has entrusted me with. My prayer is that I obey and give as God has given, generously.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 

As I was meditating on Galatians 5:22-23, commonly known as the “Fruit of the Spirit” the phrase self-control struck me in a new way since I had just listened to the recent sermon on Idolatry. I realized how much I allow other’s opinions and judgment, both real and perceived, to control my words and actions. I tend to idolize doing the right thing for everyone and making everyone happy, to an unhealthy extent so that I often don’t realize what it is the Jesus wants me to do. And I realized that the phrase “self-control” means for me that I’m not “others-controlled.” So this week I’m going to meditate on what it means to be controlled by the Holy Spirit who dwells in myself rather than externally controlled by other’s opinions and wanting to receive praise and favor from people rather than confidence that I’m living in and acting in God’s Word and his desire for me.

Life in the fast lane

Surely make you lose your mind

Life in the fast lane

Life in the fast lane

Everything all the time

Life in the fast lane.

Life In The Fast Lane, The Eagles

Hotel California Album, 1976

This wornout track on my Eagles album tells of a couple taking their excessive lifestyle to the edge.  Since my first post of 2 Much Too Busy, its like Don Henley’s voice has been humming on a backburner.  To make the fast lane a little faster, my maid, my cook, my nanny and my prayer partner left abruptly.  Well, at least that’s what I said to mom as I hugged her good-bye last Friday night.  (She travels here from 2 states over ever year to bless us for a month, and its the closest we’ll ever get to having a Christian Alice living in the house).  Sigh.

In mulling over my next posts, and prayerful considerations of my calendar and commitments, I’m also reminded of (Socrates? Plato?) who said “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

So, Granny left, and I’m back to planning full boat dinners by myself and digging out the Endust.  Two days after her departure, the upstairs is a mess, the catbox needs cleaning, I have two more doses of antibiotics to give sick kids, and I’ve abandoned my knitting project (again).  

In working through this topic Scripturally and prayerfully, the first thing I came to realize was that I’m a little offtrack with my #1 ministry (my husband - not my kids.  I learned that from Martha Peace in a study of her book, The Excellent Wife).  Good wife-ing is hard business.  (Which, as a sidenote, I’ve taught or taken classes in pretty much every Christian topic under the sun, but studies on how to be a good wife have been few and far between.)  And so, God’s first pit stop for me in my considerations of my next installment of 2 Much Too Busy, has been to consider my recent ”wife in the fast lane”, and how this affects my husband.  I love how J.B. Phillips puts Colossians 3:18:  Wives, adapt yourselves to your husbands, this is your Christian duty.  He doesn’t adapt to me, I am to adapt to him.  Selah.

Sigh.

 So, a less than excellent wife has this bit of wisdom to share with another wife who may be one-half of an excessive couple today (or at least the fast lane excesses of kids, husband, home, job, ministry, yadda):

Pull over.  Stop.  Think about your man.  Really sit and think about him and all he brings to the table.  Where can you adapt?  Secondly, be excessive to your husband today.  Excessive thanks, excessive praise, excessive kisses and hugs, excessive words to build him up.  Excessive respect.  Excessively build him up, according to his needs. 

And please, I don’t want to hear all the caveats and “what about this” and “okay, but you need to consider that” and all the disclaimers from the well meaning. 

Let’s keep it simple:  Take a pit stop from wife in the fast lane and be excessive to your husband in some way today if you have a good man who loves Jesus.   

And if you’re still waiting to taste wife in the fast lane, i.e. you’re single, pick someone close to you.  Where can you adapt?  Where can you give them excess?  You’re in Drivers Ed.  Pracise   

I had a good talk over a cigar with Cambria last weekend. We always have a good talk over a cigar. While our once vigorously planned “quarterly goal” meetings have been shelved for the last few quarters, we decided it was time to talk Summer Quarterly Goals.

I was bemoaning the fact that my previous goals that I once was so disciplined about now were all obsolete as I lacked any motivation to get up at 5am, read my bible for 1/2 an hour and go running 5x a week, make all my lunches a month in advance and freeze them, etc.

She said, “maybe you need to figure out your mission for this summer and build your life around that instead of trying to get all those little chores disciplined. The mission will make you be disciplined around it.” So I have been trying to think about my mission this summer.

I thought about why I don’t “have time” to be on mission or do things that are healthy for me. And Mark preached on idolatry.

I realized, sheerly by reviewing how my time was spent, where my idols were.

It was time to think about this deeply, so instead of calling my friends, going out for late Sunday night happy hour,  or going home to clean up the house before another week started… I headed out to Golden Gardens to think through stuff and talk to God. It was God date time.

I pulled into a parking spot to view the beautiful sunset knowing full well that pretty much every other car pulled up would be hosting a couple’s make-out session, but (more…)

If you call the Wedgwood campus home and somehow missed it on the Wedgwood blog . . . Don’t miss out on a great opportunity to spend time with the WW ladies on June 20th! For more info, read this post.

Tera Miller’s vulnerable article “Naked and Unashamed” was only posted a few days ago and garnered a lot of attention and responses. She really wrote well on the sin-free topic of loving and accepting your body and appreciating different shapes, etc. However, opening a whole different world, one commenter stated the following: 

I’m struggling with knowing if my shame is legitimate or not. Part of me is ashamed because I haven’t taken good care of the the body Christ made for me and so my body directly reflects these sins. However there is also a part of me that hears the lies of the enemy saying you are dirty and ugly. I will continue to seek Christ in exposing the truth in my shame and where to walk in freedom and where to repent and seek restoration.  

Now there’s something I can relate to! The minor background on me is that food and overeating were the major struggles (more…)

If you missed it on the Ballard blog, I wanted to alert you to a wonderful post by another Jesus-loving lady - Tami Hagglund, member at the Ballard campus. She shares honestly about the pain, shame and guilty memories of premarital sex with her husband, and walks into the grace of God with beauty and joy. Check it out.

By Tera Miller 

Editor’s note: Tera Miller loves Jesus, is a Mars Hill Member at the Ballard Campus, is a hilarious Cranium teammate, and wrote for the former Vox Pop Magazine. She is real and she is gutsy. Look for more to come.

When I was first invited to go to a Korean women’s day spa, I was elated at the idea of soaking in therapeutic whirlpools with hydro jets, breathing in the aromas of the Mugwart steam sauna, and meditating in one of the heated rooms lined with different elements like jade, sand or clay.  I could almost feel my skin getting smoother by the second!

But when I learned that it was a naked spa, I literally heard the record player scratch in my head and the music suddenly go silent.  NAKED?  Are you for real?  How naked are we talking?  Well, apparently, naked means nothing but a pink fabric shower cap over your hair and a bracelet with your locker key around your wrist.  That’s pretty naked by my standards.

You see, Korean bath houses are a centuries-old tradition, beneficial for (more…)

At some point in the high-speed connection of city life, you will inevitably hear someone say to you, “You’re doing too much.”  These are opportunities to check oneself. 

There are a few questions you can ask yourself.  Some are good.  Some are bad.  Some are  ugly. (more…)