- Put waist-length hair in a ponytail or up into a shower cap
- Tie your sneakers
- Signal touchdown
- Put the little backs on your pierced earrings
- Peel potatoes…or cucumbers…or carrots..or anything else
- Change a wiggling toddler’s diaper
- Hold your playing cards while playing one of them
- Give a bear hug
- Clap
- Type very long blogs
It’s been a little more than three weeks since I fell down a couple of steps and broke my wrist in two places, necessitating surgery. Even though it’s not my dominant hand, there are so many things I cannot do at all and so many more that require tons of extra time to accomplish with only five digits. And not being able to carry out tasks in the normally fastest way possible really drives me crazy.
I’m the kind of person who finds the shortest route to my destination and always uses it (although surprisingly I don’t exceed the speed limit.) All of my life I’ve tried to be fast, rapid, swift, speedy, expeditious and any other synonym you find for the word “quick.” Second place has always seemed like the first loser to me.
So what am I learning/relearning during these weeks (maybe months?) of recovery and forced delays? That hurrying through my to-do list may not be God’s best plan for me, and I need to take more time to savor my Savior.
How about you? Has life forced you or your loved one to slow down? Whatever is weighing you down–a health crisis, natural aging, financial worries, family strife, or unfair circumstances–believe and ask God to use this “interruption” for His good. And if you’re still going full-speed ahead, I recommend you voluntarily ease back and give God time to transform you into all you were meant to be.
In college I had the following poem on my apartment wall and I needed to read it again today. Perhaps it can be your prayer, too. ( And please don’t miss the music video at the end, “Slow Down” by Chuck Girard. It’s the real message I wanted to share today–I picked it before I had even written a word. )
SLOW ME DOWN, LORD by Wilferd A. Peterson
Slow me down, Lord.
Ease the pounding of my heart
By the quieting of my mind.
Steady my harried pace
With a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, admidst the confusions of my day,
The calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves
With the soothing music of the sighing streams
That live in my memory.
Help me to know
The magical restoring power of sleep.
Teach me the art
Of taking minute vacations of slowing down to look at a flower;
To chat with an old friend or to make a new one;
To pat a stray dog,
To watch a spider build a web;
To smile at a child;
Or to read a few lines from a good book.
Remind me each day
That the race is not always to the swift;
That there is more to life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward
Into the branches of the towering oak
And know that it grew slowly and well.
Slow me down, Lord,
And inspire me to send my roots deep
Into the soil of life’s enduring values
That I may grow toward the stars
Of my great destiny.
Amen.
(To view the music video, open in your browser or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3FzAk5dgUc
