intentionally still

Today is a day where I need to be still.

I tend to try to run the race of life too fast. So fast that I miss the simple beauty in the everyday. I run and run and run and run until the point where I either fall or am exhausted. I see that pattern in my life. A pattern of constantly racing, and as I wrote yesterday, constantly working.

The working, the running, it keeps my mind busy.

It’s like a crutch. The more I become busy the less I have to really think about some of the hard stuff in life. So I run. Full force. And I work. Too much. Adding more to a schedule that is already too full. Losing site of the beauty in the everyday.

Yesterday, I was reminded to be still. I was reminded of the gift of life and the importance for me, for us, to step off of that racing track at times to just be thankful for where we are and to see the goodness around us in all circumstances. Sometimes, we move so fast that we miss, we forget, to see the beauty right in front of our faces. I do that — the moving all too fast — always looking for the next thing to finish but rarely resting in the finished.

I need to sit and rest. To allow myself to be okay to not run some days. To let myself think, to pray, to laugh, to be real. Not tucking the emotions into my sleeve and smiling the half-smile. I don’t have all the answers to stuff in life. I’m just a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter, who tends to run too fast in life and then  writes about how she stumbles, or falls, and picks herself up again.

I’ve been running fueled by me. And I ended up exhausted.

So today, today I am intentionally still.