Slow down, you move too fast. . .

We are only a few days away from the start of Holy Week, and I’m glad. I always start Lent with good intention and hopes of deep spiritual renewal. Sometimes that does happen, but this year, the cult of busyness seems to have gotten the best of me yet again. I have not slowed down enough to really DO Lent the way I’d wanted to—the prayer and reading and being with God I’d hoped for.

I really struggle with busyness. I have always been a hard worker at school and work and home, and I try very hard to please everyone.  It’s my nature, and for the longest time I also thought this was one of my virtues. But now I’m not actually so sure: in fact, there’s a whole lot of ego and vanity in thinking that your own contribution to the world is utterly indispensible to everyone! Also, this way of life takes a toll. You’d think, half a century + into it, I would have figured out how to balance things out, but I haven’t reached that point yet. Hours and days and weeks and months and years race by, each faster than the next, and I’ve been crazy busy the whole time. . . and how much of it has really mattered? It’s probably best not to do the math.

My father used to say, “You can’t have a good Easter without observing a good Holy Week,” and I think he was right about that. And in my case this year, maybe all those good intentions I had for Lent can get condensed into Holy Week—this coming week, I can sit still and focus enough for that long on Christ’s love and passion to feel the heat of God’s love and also return some of that love back to Him. In the last lap of Lent, o Lord, I lay upon your altar my rarest offerings: my time and attention.  Thank you, Lord, for not giving up on me!