by Bethany Rutledge
Monday night I had a breakdown. The previous week was a long one, work then a four day eight –hours- a- day conference. All that was fine and I was very excited about the conference. But then I also decided to combine the conference weekend with reunions involving a few great friends I had not seen in a long time. Then there was the after-hours homework assigned at the conference. In addition, I have a race coming up so there was no way I wanted to miss out on two- a- day training sessions combined with all the rest.
Come Monday after a Sunday spent attending the conference and driving many hours, during which I actually pulled into a state park somewhere in South Carolina to get my bike ride in, I arrived home Sunday evening and prepared to do it all again the next week. Needless to say I started off Monday physically and emotionally exhausted. My response? I thought mean thoughts about others, 
yelled angry things at slow drivers in traffic, and was short, hurried, and rude all day. After work Monday I spent two hours in traffic and arrived late to swim practice. The original plan was to leave swim practice early and arrive late to join my Monday night Bible study. Long story short after all my harried-ness and hurrying I ended up leaving swim practice in tears Monday evening and going home to bed. I wondered why some people seem to be able to do it all without apparent undue stress.
Later that night I pondered the direction that the week had taken and what I could have done differently. I picked up a book titled “Breathe: Creating Space for God in a Hectic Life.” Well the title right there should have told me something! Of all the things I had managed to pack in my day and week, God was something that was definitely missing. In truth, I had planned to attend part of my Bible study Monday night but I could not even make it to that!
Flipping through the first chapters a few things stood out to me. The first was the way in which the author, Keri Wyatt Kent, described the consequences of living a hurried life. She termed it “putting God in the margins” essentially saying that filling your life with more and more things, even the good things, can crowd the “margins” of our lives and push God out of it! She even offers research that shows people who are hurried and stressed have higher blood pressure and even chronic fatigue, depression, and weight gain. Kent explains further that when we have no margins we have no reserves to deal with stress and unexpected events. What’s the solution? Choosing not to hurry! The book goes into a lot of other great ideas and research but I decided that it would be prudent for me to not “hurry” through it and focus on one thing at a time.
Since reading this on Monday I have been making a conscious effort to avoid hurry and over-scheduling. For someone with a “Type A” personality this can be difficult! But something else this book is reminding me is that the hurried mindset does not allow for relationships and people to come first. With that in mind, I am trying every day to make less time-oriented goals and more goals of staying calm and putting people and God first. Hopefully my family and friends will benefit from this too! Bottom line? Doing more may not always be the best solution. God loves us for who we are not for what we accomplish and achieve. Also, fitting in many things, even good things, may not lead to better health.
Specifically, I am talking about the belief that the pursuit of athletic goals is for the young. You only have to think about the last time you were with a group of friends wistfully remembering their “glory days” of high school football, or pee wee soccer to know what I mean. Groups of adults reminiscing about the good old days when they were at their athletic peak, the possibilities seemed limitless, and that they could conquer the world.
