It is nearly June 1 which means we are six months into 2023, six months of my intention to slow down. While I have made impeccable progress, catching myself wanting to do this or that, I’m still letting my monkey mind meander to tasks or distractions that keep me busy. I have both moved out and finished out the school year, moving at a pace that I wish was so much less hasty than it actually was.
But that is the beauty of internal check-ins—it is not only a chance to celebrate progress, but an opportunity to understand where I am still struggling to slow down. Simply the awareness alone that I love to work, might be addicted to work and use busyness as a distraction from pain was enlightening enough to change my direction from a squirrel going in 17 directions at once to a mighty snail that knows it’s OK to slow down.
I have harbored my inhibitions that send me off in so many directions, especially in times where I have the opportunity to rest, but choose not to. When I am at work, I am not in a position to rest, though I am getting very good at taking breaks and doing just one thing at a time; when I have left work and have time on my hands to get all the things done that I said aside whilst working my day job, I think of every single thing I need to do and then my opportunity to rest fades away.
Old hurried habits
My favorite habit was to go to the café on Saturdays and leave it on Sunday as his excuse to journal and get some coffee before church— but the Saturday tradition I had to busy myself down to a whittled, weary self in dire need of sleep, was a prime indication that I was using my days off to work, not really because I wanted to so I do love what I do, but because it was so painful to not be working.
I would find myself at that café, café latte in hand, far removed from my troubles, and the environment that caused them though left with the mind that couldn’t stand my circumstances. Sitting with my laptop screen, I would feel myself get the opportunity to relax away from my troublesome home environment. And even though I had shown up to work, I realized how nice it was to sit in the sunshine and let it pour over my soul, weary as she had gotten.
However much I had intended to work, I realized that these trips were respites from the harshness of my life. I might’ve showed up with the impulse to work, but I realize that sitting in a café was my respite. It was an opportunity to take a break from what was plaguing me. And now that I do not live in that environment, I am free to stay at home in my peaceful abode, without needing to run off to a café. I finally have my Safe Haven. And that safe haven is teaching me to do much less and rest much more.
The Slow life
So to slow down amidst the chaos of moving and all that comes with it plus being a teacher that added track coach to her repertoire equals so far from my intention to slow down. And that is why these check-ins are so valuable.
I am now equipped with the knowledge that understands why I used to stay so busy and I get to heal—assimilating that information into a belief that it is OK to slow down, rest and sink in to my feelings, painful as that might be.
Because running from them, as I had learned to do, overworking myself, over-caffeinating myself, and running myself thin was a far-more-painful of reality than simply sitting in a few feelings, while they simmer into a boil and left me.
I am proud of how far I have come since I took my newfound knowledge and turned it into a powerful intention to stop doing what was killing me, and teach myself new, nurturing, habits that shower me in love. And yes, give my weary soul rest.
“Come to me all you who are laden with heavy burdens, and I will give your soul rest” from Matthew Chapter 11 is now something I am starting to completely embrace, rather than simply be aware of. I am putting in the practice to rest, no matter how hard it is to set down my to-do list and simply be still. Those feelings I ran from aren’t so scary after all. They were scarier when they chased me while I ran from them.
Now a days while I sit with them, and I have some tea, they are revealing things, factoids, that are helping me to heal. And it’s nice that they leave once they revealed to me what it is I need to know.