A note from Kelly King: A must confess that I sometimes allow busyness to be an idol in my life. I can uphold it as a virtue or burden that I bear, but the honest truth is that busyness is not next to godliness. I can allow busyness to creep into my life as a way to avoid intimacy with others or a way to win approval from those I want to impress. It can be ugly! If you can relate, take a moment to read Kaye’s article today, and pray about your 2020 calendar and how you can create some margin in your life to hear from the Lord and to develop deeper relationships with those you love.
Being busy is revered in our culture. You may have heard the saying, “If you want something to get done, ask a busy person to do it.” Busy people are…busy. In addition to our normal version of busy, the holidays seem to take it up several notches. The nights aren’t so “silent,” and our to-do and Christmas lists look like a twisted version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. What could possibly be wrong with being busy? Nothing, if busy is reflective of a healthy work ethic and your calendar also contains some white space or margin. However, for many, this is not the case.
Busy has a harmful, dark side. It has become a legal addiction.
As we close out one year and look to the next, let’s take some time to reflect on our calendars and ask ourselves some hard questions.
For your consideration, here are two primary ways busy shows its dark side and some questions to ponder:
1. Avoidance. Do you stay busy to avoid conflict or hard conversations at home? Let’s call that relational avoidance. Do you stay busy to avoid not feeling something painful, or to not think about something personally difficult or convicting? Do you stay busy to avoid facing the changes that need to be made on the personal level? If you are using busy to numb yourself in anyway, then it is a legal addiction, and while it is popular, it is not healthy.
2. Approval. Does your busy define you? Is it the source of your identity? Do you find your worth and value in how busy you are or appear to others? Are you using it to seek man’s approval over God’s approval?
If after careful review you realize that your version of busy is actually harming you and the ones you love, may I encourage you to be courageous with your calendar and take the necessary steps to ruthlessly eliminate busy from your life? Perhaps the first step is to ask forgiveness from those you have hurt by being too busy to engage, invest, and connect. Secondly, give your calendar a margin makeover. By that I mean, schedule your days with enough margin to connect with God, yourself, and the ones you love.
Women are hurting because they are too busy. Women are being hurt by spouses and friends who are too busy. If you are mentoring a younger woman, please address this with her. Use these questions as conversation starters and challenge her to develop patterns and practices that reflect balance. And since leaders go first, how would you answer these questions?
I am praying that we will all take time before the end of year to breathe and ask ourselves hard questions, good questions, challenging questions. Let’s commit our best, whole, healthiest selves to 2020!
Kaye Hurta has a Masters Degree in counseling from Liberty University and is a crisis counselor for Women’s Events through Lifeway Christian Resources. Whether speaking, singing, or listening, Kaye’s passion is to help others find intimacy with Christ and soul transformation through the living pages of His Word. Kaye met and married her husband Chris in Austin, Texas in 1987. They have two daughters through the miracle of adoption, Madison and Cami. Kaye is also a contributing author for the Lifeway resource, Women Reaching Women in Crisis.
