Sometimes, life brings you to a halt with twists, and other times, you plan a turn that requires you to slow down to take it. I recently experienced a little of both. So here I am in the midst of a blessed, slow moment—a pause, indeed.
The turn.
Feeling restless, untethered, if you will, I took some time to evaluate if I would take a class for my Berkeley program or take a break. It’s good to have witnesses to what God is doing and to have others praying for your “big” stuff. I enlisted a handful of trusted friends for prayer and accountability. I was eager to see if a particular class I’d been eyeing would be offered in the fall. I have three classes left to complete my program and had initially thought I’d take one in the fall and the remaining two next year. It’s a good rhythm that has worked in the past. But, it turns out I am not in the past. This is the present.
A few weeks later, I began to feel the need for pause. Mind you, not the want. Unsure, I continued praying. Gradually, it became evident to me that the call was to slow down, trust God, and make space in my mind, heart, and schedule. Berkeley released the new course list; the one I’d been waiting for is being offered. I did not sign up for it. Trust is the name of the game.
Trust that this season is good for this season’s purposes. Trust that foregoing certain things makes room for other things God intends to use. This was a planned turn. I took it. I’m now in it.
I shared my decision with my praying crew. One very dear, wise friend shared an eye-opening detail from Psalm 23. She pointed out the wording in verse 2: “He makes me lie down in green pastures…” (NIV). My mind conjured the image of a giant, tender hand –bigger than me, my thoughts and circumstances– grabbing my human frame wonderfully made from dust to gently lie me down somewhere safe to rest. (Definitions matter. Safe and rest may not always come in the form we’d expect.)
The Twist.
With my decision still fresh in my mind, another pause forced me to pay attention. One week after my birthday, I began to feel abdominal discomfort that led to a visit to the ER. Many hours and a CT scan later, with concern, a doctor explained it was acute pancreatitis and asked me what I drank. Completely oblivious to the (warranted) tone of concern, I answered honestly, “A lot of water.” I drink around 2-3 litters a day. Back to the drawing board. Since I’m not much of a drinker, the next culprit for a troubled pancreas is usually fatty foods and excess sugar. That’s more my jam.
They kept me under observation for 36 hours in a gurney, with an IV in my arm. The next evening, I was discharged with a prescription for strong meds and follow-up tests and appointments in a month. Gus, who had spent the night in a tiny chair to keep me company in the freezing ER, spent the week sick with a cold. At the tail end of his cold, I began to cough. For a little while, our tiny apartment hosted a concert of coughs and sneezes. I spent this past weekend in bed with a fever.
Have you noticed how health matters, large and small, show up unscheduled? Their mere presence is a reason for pause—unwelcome, yes, but a pause, all the same. They demand an immediate change of pace.
The Pause.
When you tilt your head out the window of a moving car or a train, the cool air on your face blowing through your hair, it’s like getting a wind shower; your whole body feels invigorated. Slow down enough, and you can smell the flowers in a field or the flavours of an orchard; you take in the details with your senses, one magnificent wonder at a time.
A good trip affords you some of both: being taken by the beauty around you and slowly taking in what your human frame can hold. Although I may be losing the metaphor here, life is not meant to be lived at one speed. Though change can often be challenging, the same speed will keep us the same.
Something about slowing down invites a shift. By altering speeds, we are changing from one state to another. I've always built rhythms (and the accompanying expectations) in the same way–with little pause because my narrative always was that slowing down doesn’t achieve much.
The pause brought on by my planned hiatus from classes and further affirmed by my body’s medical needs accomplishes something far more valuable than productivity: it’s bringing clarity. In that state of resting from the normal pace, when we slow down, we behold the texture of our life—the places where it’s course, smooth, robust, or thin.
To be untethered is not to be physically connected or fastened to something. That’s how I felt when I was compelled to pray about what my summer and fall would be like, effort and finance-wise. No longer tied to the familiar demands of a semester and the expectations built into that rhythm, what would the second half of the year look like? I wondered.
To untether also means “to release a person, animal, or thing so that he, she, or it can move freely”1. In other words, borrowing the language of Ecclesiastes, there is a time for every season. A time to hold fast and a time to move freely. Discerning the difference in timing takes listening to the Holy Spirit’s nudging and sometimes things like an ER visit.
Seeing God use grace and circumstances to take my tired habits, thought patterns, and body and lie me down on a different surface where the texture of life may change. This is a state of rest from what was; it’s also a dynamic state where new is being made.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/untether#google_vignette
So good. Loved the line about pauses bringing clarity. So true.
So interesting how God gave you a nudging about making space and slowing down before you physically had to do so. Praying health and peace and a closeness with God in this time of recovery. You are loved!