Then You Stop And Realise …

Apparently you just keep going.

There’s this project today, there’s that assignment tomorrow, there’s that challenge the day after. It’s all booked in your diary and when anyone asks if you’re available, you can genuinely inform them that you’ll have to check because you’re pretty well booked up for the forseeable future.

Apparently you just keep going.

There’s only enough time to stop, grab something to eat, catch up with your loved ones, then it’s back to it. Preparing for it, checking it to see it’s on point, then delivering it and dealing with all the issues that comes with that. Afterwards there might be opportunities to see the feedback and consider the immediate response, but not that much time, because you have to get to the next task and the next activity.

Apparently you just keep going.

Until your body tells you it’s about time to stop. It’s slower than it was before and despite the work-outs you put in the schedule the body is telling you it’s not designed to go on relentlessly – it’s not that kind of machine. It’s not just your body as well. There’s something about the state of mind and sense of the soul. It was not set up to be this way. There’s got to be time for something else.

Something nourishing, something refreshing, something reinvigorating, something reflective, something restorative.

Also in that something there’s time to be grateful. You didn’t make yourself. You didn’t create yourself with the intrinsic qualities that makes you uniquely who you are. Even these opportuities to be active, functioning and contributing to the lives of others, that’s not completely down to you. Others were definitely involved. Indeed there’s a greater being at work in it all.

Then you stop and consider. All those people, all those lives, all that activity, all those engagements, all the things exchanged in conversations and collaborations.

You stop and realise that so much has been done. So much good has come from it and you’re not the same person you were at the start of the process. You’re not what you want to be of course, you haven’t hit all your desired outcomes, but things have happened that you weren’t expecting – some of them pleasant as well.

You stop and take on board just some of these things and realise just why it’s worth being thankful. It’s not ideal and there were some pains along the way, but you’re not where you were before and where are now, believe it or not, is still better than where you were before because of who you are now in terms of character development.

All this you can appreciate and humbly acknowledge before you get going again. In fact it does give you a bounce in you step as you get going again – one that looks up in gratitude knowing you didn’t have to be where you are, but thank God you are. It’s an honour and privilege and you dare not take that for granted because there is coming a time when you’ll realise …

Apparently you won’t always keep going.

(Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash)

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden