Let's escape to reality

Personal Photo: Taken in Wyoming on Clay and my honeymoon

This week, my mom and I must have been to the store at least three times, as we are preparing to leave for our annual fishing trip. However, my mom wanted to make some coleslaw, so we picked up the ingredients. We went to make it yesterday and realized we were almost completely out of mayonnaise. Well, we needed mayonnaise, so I hopped into my car and drove the minute drive down to the nearest store to grab the ingredient. I left my phone at home with my mom because it was going to be such a quick trip. This isn't the first time, but because I left my phone away from me (it is an extremely rare occasion that it is not on me) I found myself making a point to recognize how absolutely present my situation was. I was driving, the sky was bright, I was appreciating the physical space that I was in. There was nothing else that I could reach or could reach me outside of my present physical space. It felt nice.

How many times are you without your phone? How many times do you put it away, where work, social media, and the internet cannot reach you? Probably not often, and while I am really glad that we have the ability to connect with each other through this platform, I do think it is extremely valuable to take some time to step back and slow it down. We are always so available for the things we need to do. We get text messages from our banks when we spend money, we get email notifications from our jobs, we get alerts when someone tags us, likes our post, and sends us a DM. Quickly, we can find ourselves in our "free time" checking our phone, keeping in touch with others far away, and seeing what needs to be done next at work.

Time is such a slippery thing, truly. We take the minutes we have and spend them splitting ourselves up, trying to do so many things at once. Sure, we can sit with our family and check Instagram. Absolutely, we can look up a news article and listen to a podcast. Of course, we can read our emails while we are out at lunch with our friend. We spread ourselves thin because every minute is a precious minute that we could be using to be productive, be efficient, make progress. I talked mostly so far about our phones, but honestly, this applies to not only our phones, but also to how much we try to tackle and how being efficient is often valued more than the time we slow down. Our to-do lists only ever get longer, and the pressure of getting things done quicker mounts before we can catch our breath. We are focusing constantly on the next thing, always looking at what we need to do after we finish what we are currently doing. I am guilty of it. For an example unrelated to phones, I have one related to a hobby of mine. I like to sew and while I have had my sewing machine since I was twelve years old, I still consider myself a beginner. I have so much to learn, but I get so excited about what the finished product will look like that I really have to slow myself down before I make a mistake. I get impatient, I want to see it completely done, so I often fail to appreciate the step by step and the things my hands are doing actually during the process. In other words, I devalue the present moment by assuming that the end result will be better than what I am doing right now. This is one of many examples. I am sure that you have a few of your own where we abandon the moment we are in, to look at the next thing, the next moment, a time that has not come yet, even if it is near.

What I am trying to express is how easily we can escape our presence. How unassuming our multitasking is? How ambitious we are to do more or to do the next thing. With all of these things, what do we miss? Do we miss the old inside joke our sibling told? Do we really recognize what our hands are doing, and our mind is considering when we are trying to read the news and listen to a podcast? Do we miss the body language that tells us our friend needs someone to really listen to them when we are soaked in our emails? Do we devalue what our hands are doing and the space around us because we are impatient? The concept of presence is something so lost on us all nowadays. We are not only eager to multitask, but often expected to be so available. Available for things to swoop in, to be reached by the outside world, to know what is going on in others' lives. Not only this, but available to be interrupted, to put the things we are doing on hold, to be finished with what we are doing now so that we can easily move onto the next thing.

What does it mean to be present, really? What is the value of it? Oxford defines presence as "the state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present in a place or thing." In the world we live in, we can almost apply this definition to our minds separately from our bodies. Our physical being could be existing in our backyard, while our minds are at work. We could be with our spouse and our minds could be focusing on what a famous person recently posted. Our hands could be doing something while our minds are focusing on the next step of the process or the end goal. It can be really difficult to align ourselves to where we are unified in our presence. My point in bringing all of this up is not to chastise us for letting outside influences take over more time than we originally wanted, or for being excited about the future, the next steps in what we are doing, and being prepared for what could come after, but really it is to remind us of the value of shutting off the noise outside of the moment we are directly in and what we are actually experiencing.

Now that we acknowledge how rare it is for us to actually do this, to actually be present, both in body and in mind, in the moment, I want to consider how often we make ourselves available for God. Do we schedule meetings with Him, like our coworkers? Do we find His voice when we are multitasking? How easy is it for us to take for granted where He has placed us now because we are focused on the next step that we want Him to see us to? I think we are most likely to find Him when we are really listening, paying attention to the moment we are in and being aware. We are most likely to appreciate Him when we focus on the space we are in, how far He has brought us, and how we can trust Him to carry us through the moment we are living in. I mentioned earlier how easy it is for time to slip away from us, how easy it is to lose hours when it was only supposed to be a few minutes, how often we get interrupted, are expected to multitask, need to split our minutes three or four different ways at a time. These things demand our attention and take us away from appreciating our present moment. Time is a precious thing and there is value in making time to be unavailable to anyone and anything other than God and the space God has provided for us. When we do this, we are escaping to reality. We are focusing on what God has put right in front of us, where He has taken us, how He has blessed us. Psalm 31:14-15 states, "But I trust in you, Lord. I say, 'You are my God. My times are in your hands.'" When we multitask or get caught up in 'the next thing' or 'the next step,' we can overlook the simple things and begin to take them for granted, but when we slow down and appreciate our physical space, and make ourselves available for God alone, we can hear Him better, we can be aware of where He has led us, and so much more.

Brad Paisley, a country singer, dropped his Time Well Wasted album in August of 2005. In the title track, Paisley sings about how he could have been working overtime, washing the car, raking leaves, etc. but instead he spent the day either fishing with his dad or watching movies all day with his wife. He titled the song Time Well Wasted because what he spent the day doing was not "productive" or "efficient," but he made a memory that was more important than anything else he could have been doing. Check out the song if you haven't heard it (Time Well Wasted - YouTube). The point of the song is to highlight how priceless it is to spend our time on things that are not what we always make ourselves available for. Being in the present moment, taking the time to appreciate our reality, and taking a break from the rat race can really be valuable.

When we connect Paisley's message to our relationship with God, we can really see how precious the time we make for God is. Sure, we might not have gotten anything crossed off our list, we might not have made money during that time, but we have something that is so much better in comparison. The time we spend in our present moment can turn into some of the best opportunities to grow as a person and as a child of God. We can hear Him better without the noise of the world, and we can see how He crafted our exact space and moment in our timeline. It is an opportunity to be appreciative, it is a chance to be available for God alone, and it is a way for us to make memories with loved ones. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." When we slow down, we can find more ways to be grateful, more reasons to give God glory, and more examples of His love. I included a photo above of Clay and I on our honeymoon. We spent a week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming after the hubbub of our wedding. We are both go-getters and really struggle to slow it down, but this image captures a time when we succeeded, when we were in our own moment and when we let ourselves abandon our responsibilities to be with each other and to be with God. I look back at this image a lot and it brings me peace, reminds me that I can do it again, and how grateful I am to God that He had this moment with us during a special time in our lives. Now that we have been back home for a while and caught up in a lot, I try to use moments like this one that was captured as a reminder to make myself available for God more often than I do.

The ways in which we find ourselves being pulled in a million different directions, all while trying to be a good employee, friend, sibling, significant other, and so much more, it can be really difficult to step back, slow down, and appreciate the moment. It is something we can all work on, I am sure. God brings us to our present reality for a reason and the details of where we are right now can get lost on us when we are always looking to what is next. However, it is valuable to make ourselves available to God and available to recognize His hand in everything we are experiencing in that exact minute. His love follows us everywhere and in every second, and when we take the time to appreciate and recognize it, we can find even more blessings awaiting us in the memories we make, the little things we notice, and the growth we experience.