Addendum: How I Practice Slowing Down

Back in December, when I was intentionally blogging about slowing down, I began this post that I never brought to completion. Obviously, we are past the Christmas season and full swing into the New Year, but I've decided to post this anyway - on the off chance that there are others besides me for whom hurry and worry can show up at any time of the year.

Since this theme of Slowing Down has been on my mind so much recently, I've begun analyzing ways in my life that I intentionally "put on the brakes" or "haul on the binders", as my dad used to say. I've also been noticing areas in which I would like to practice more slowing down. I decided to make a list for each. I will share the results with you here. Note that the items on each list are not necessarily entered in the order of importance.

How I Practice Slowing Down:

1. Open my eyes to the treasure around me. Noticing things takes time, but slowing down and looking for the beauty in the ordinary all around me is very rewarding. When I see something unique or fascinating, I like to point it out to others, since taking the time to share the beauty with someone enriches my treasure hunt experience.

2. Pay attention to my body. I tend to take tension and anxiety inward. Sometimes when I am in hurry mode, I'm startled to realize that my forehead is literally bunched, my posture is hunched and my stomach is crunched. Taking a few moments to purposefully straighten my shoulders, lean back into the couch or seatback, and relax my facial and abdominal muscles can do wonders. (Sometimes my tongue is literally scrunched, too, and I need to purposefully peel it off the roof of my mouth.)

3. Name what's driving me. When the pressure starts to build, and I find myself getting uptight, it is helpful for me to identify what is causing the tension by naming it. Maybe I'm Overwhelmed or Fearing Failure or Lacking Wisdom. It could be that I have fallen into the trap of Pride or Comparison or People-pleasing (again. sigh.) When something has a name, it becomes more real, and I can start to get a handle on it, rather than having it control me. Also, if it is something I need to repent of, naming it is the first step in confession - agreeing with God about its reality. Then I can give it over to Him to handle. In any case, the intentional naming invites me to slow down in order to put into words what I am facing as well as helps to bring more clarity and peace to the situation. 

4. Make lists. Related to No. 3, this exercise requires slowing down in order to clarify and simplify. If all the things I have to do at any given time are a milling herd of nervous cattle, making a list is my lariat for corralling the lot. Hopefully the gathering and sorting results in calmer, more functional beasts.

5. Be grateful. Often, the act of gratitude requires me to shift focus and energies from myself to others. Slowing down to acknowledge that I owe a debt of thanks, and to direct the payment of gratitude to the giver is very beneficial. An almost-daily way I do this is documenting my thanks in a gratitude journal. Not only does it require me to slow down long enough to write a few lines, but also reading back over the list periodically results in restful reflection that multiplies the thanks.  

6. Use a grounding technique. When I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart and brain going at unearthly speed and hours, it helps me to do this calming exercise involving the five senses: 5. See five things (kind of hard to do in the darkness of midnight, but usually possible, albeit dimly) 4. Feel four things (smoothness of pillowcase, warm air from the register, etc.) 3. Hear three things (no problem with this one, especially if your spouse snores) 2. Smell two things (hopefully I can find good smells like shampoo or dried-on-the-clothesline sheets) 1. Taste one thing (this one is the trickiest; sometimes I'll have a tasty morsel only in my imagination)

7. Breathe-pray. Of course everyone knows that prayer changes things, including pace of life, but I'll admit that sometimes my thoughts and fears are on the autobahn and I can't even slow them down into sensible words, let alone sentences or paragraphs. I have found that the simplest prayers can be most effective. Once I heard a young lady say that our very breathing can be prayer, and I haven't dug into the theology of that or anything, but I think she is on to something. I tried it one night when I was experiencing sleep disturbances and kept waking up anxious. I decided to breathe-pray in short, easy phrases. Because we'd just had Communion at church and heard a sermon on "tasting" our Living Bread, I breathed in with these words, "I'm needy" and breathed out with Jesus' answer to me, "Take, eat (Me)". Through this simple repetitious conversation, Jesus brought me such calm.

How I Wish I Would Practice Slowing Down: (as in, slowing down on my way to altogether stopping, not slowing down to savor!)

1.  Not allow myself to be sucked into reading controversial-subjects-threaded facebook posts. I would love to learn the discipline of confidently strolling on by (or would it be scrolling on by?), if I know they will profit me nothing - or at least not much!  

2.  Get rid of the FOMO bug. Fear Of Missing Out is a pesky nuisance that can quickly develop into a full-blown infestation. I think FOMO is a modern term for NV, something that's been around for a long time. Contentment would be a good start in eradicating the pest.  

3. Be done with assuming things about others, judging their actions and motives, and trying to fix them, which is really just a nice name for being controlling. Not that I would have much experience in this department, or anything...

4. Kick the habit of pro  cras  tin  a  ting. Putting off, and putting off something important is not an ideal way to slow down. (Is this blog post a case in point??)

5. Forego the fear of failure. I've been noticing lately just how paralyzing this fear can be. If love is the antidote and caster-outer of fear, I should think that "doing the next right thing in love" (as Emily P Freeman, for one, says) is a great way to practice halting the failure fear.

What are the ways you are intentional about slowing down in your life - in a busy season, especially? Are there also areas in which you'd like to begin slowing down, with the goal of stopping entirely? I'd love to hear about them! 

Important Three-letter Hinge

 

"Don't be afraid," the angel could have said to us in a Wisconsin snowstorm, "FOR unto you is sent this morn a snow plow driver." 

On a recent Sunday morning during Sunday School, I learned about the important little word "for" that appears in fearful situations frequenting the Christmas Story. Our lesson was taken from Isaiah 43, where there are phrases such as "Fear not, for I have redeemed thee" and "Fear not, for I am with thee". One of the ladies in the class pointed out the similarities of these God-declarations in Isaiah to the messages that angels delivered to fearful Nativity characters. 

God didn't scold these anxious humans, He acknowledged their fear and gave them a reason to trust Him in the midst of that fear. The word "for" is the hinge connecting His directive for them not to be afraid with the reason they didn't need to be: Don't fear, Mary, FOR you have found favor with God. Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, FOR her coming baby is conceived of the Holy Ghost. Fear not, Shepherds, FOR unto you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord. 

"Don't be afraid in fearful circumstances, Dear Child of God, FOR your Heavenly Father is provisionary and trustworthy" seemed to be a takeaway from the lesson. What a great truth, I thought, as I left Sunday School. I will need to remember that for my own anxious moments. I had no idea how soon I would be able to put it into practice.

Later on that same Sunday, Ken & I and Kerra headed out on the drive to Hayward, Wisconsin for our "Christmas" with the Schrocks. We began our trip several hours earlier than we had initially planned because of a significant snowfall forecast for northern Michigan and Wisconsin, areas we traverse on our typical route to Hayward.

We made excellent time as we drove through the night on bare roads with minimal traffic. Near the town of Iron Mountain in Michigan, though, we hit snow. The first snowflakes in the air soon turned into a full-blown snowstorm of the thick, swirling, mesmerizing, hypnotizing brand.

Ken drove well, but slowly. The more we crept along the trackless, desolate stretch of road, the more tense I became. Ken asked me to help him keep an eye out for the edge of the road and an ear out for the rumble strip embedded in the center line of the road, so I hunched forward and peered out the windshield into the storm.

The 3.5 hours it usually takes to get from Iron Mountain to Mom & Dad's place in Hayward stretched into almost twice that long because of the driving difficulty. We navigated areas of poor visibility, and a few times we pulled off the road for a breather and to see if the storm would let up any for us to go on. (These ten-or-fifteen-minute breaks did seem to make things easier.) In some places, we pushed ahead through deep unplowed sections, and then slowed way down when the snow we were "plowing" with the van whooshed up over the windshield, creating sudden whiteouts. 

At one point, when we were an hour or so from Hayward (under normal driving conditions, that is), Ken pulled off the highway onto a side road to de-ice the windshield wipers. The van was just nicely off the main road, headed down a slight dip on that side road, when another vehicle came toward us and we had to get off to the side of the narrow road to let that driver by. 

When we came to a full stop, we were quite close to the snowbank at the edge of the road and when Ken tried to back the van up onto the side road proper again, the right front wheel slid farther into the bank and we were stuck. 

The knowledge that we were very stuck gradually sunk in after a lot of tire-spinning and passenger-pushing and hands-shoveling of snow away from the van wheels and a futile putting of van floor mats behind said wheels. "We'll need someone to pull us out of here," said Driver Ken, who is also known as Mr. Optimistic.  

Oh, dear! If Mr. Optimistic says we can't get unstuck by ourselves, it's bad. My fear kicked into high gear even though my senses were somewhat sluggish from having travelled all night with little sleep. How will we get out? It's still dark out! The snow is so deep! We're too far from Hayward to call my brothers and bother them to come get us unstuck. We're in a very unpopulated area of northern Wisconsin. If and when a vehicle does come by on the main road, we're too far in this side road to be seen by its driver... 

And then, after Kerra and I had climbed back into the warm van and Ken had walked off into the cold without telling us where he was going, (we ladies didn't know yet that his destination was up beside the main highway to flag down some help) I noticed the gas gauge light had come on. The next thing I knew, the distance to empty reading on the van dashboard was 0 km. Oh, great! I thought. Now we're going to sit here until we run out of gas yet. As if we don't have enough running-out-of-gas stories in our repertoire! Fine, I'll shut the motor off and just hope we don't freeze before somebody stops to help. 

I think it was at that point, when cynicism was about to join hands with my despair, I thought about praying. I don't think I actually remembered in detail my earlier commitment to fear not, FOR my God is trustworthy, but I did remember that I can cry to Him for help. So I did. Later, I learned it was right then that Ken specifically prayed God would send a vehicle along on the main road - someone with a rope or chain - to pull us out. This was after he had waited on the shoulder of the main highway for a very long time without seeing a single car or truck on the road. 

Very shortly after we both prayed our separate but joined prayers, a tow truck approached, slowed down somewhat, and drove on by. Soon after that, we heard...what is that, a flutter of angel wings? No, wait, that's a rumble of snow plow blades! 

Ken talked to the snow plow driver, who said that yes, he has a chain along, and no, he's not allowed to stop his highway work to pull somebody out of the ditch, and yes, he would want someone to stop and help if he was the one stuck in the snow at the side of the road, so no, he was not going to obey the letter of the law (my words), and yes, he would hook up his chain to our van and "walk" us right outta there. (pretty much his words)

It was an easy piece of work for his plow to pull our van out of the snowy ditch to the middle of the side road, facing away from the main highway. The driver accepted our immense gratitude for his help, but he wouldn't take any of the money Ken offered him for his trouble. After he left to continue plowing the snowy highway, we still had to back out of the side road before we could get out onto the main road and continue on our way to Hayward. 

Ken tried backing the van up the slight rise toward the highway, but he couldn't gain enough speed and  momentum to do it. The tires started spinning again. Since there was no room to turn around on that narrow road, eventually Ken drove ahead farther into the side road's snowy depths. He figured that way he could get more of a run at it when he put it in reverse again, but that move put my worrying into gear again. I was almost sure we would shimmy right back into the ditch, and then what? Wouldn't that be tempting God or something, to require a second rescue? 

But Ken steadily backed the van through the deep snow and out onto the main highway, where we were soon once again pointed toward Mom & Dad's place. Thankfully, both lanes of the highway were plowed by that time. The snow had stopped falling, and daylight had come. 

We made it to a gas station just outside Hayward to refuel before our vehicle ran out of gas completely (the angle the van was in from leaning into the snowbank had distorted the gas gauge reading). And, after some second tries and maneuverations through the ten inches of snow on Mom & Dad's unplowed road, we "skittered into their driveway" at last. 

What a happy reunion with my parents! And what a happy time we had with the Wisconsin Schrocks in the coming days, celebrating Christmas and delighting in the privilege of being together in person. It definitely was worth it, to go through our travel difficulties to get to the good family times in the end.

I feel a bit more connection to the once-fearful people in the Christmas story, now that I've encountered my own "fear not, FOR..." experience. The details of my story have implications of far less significance than theirs have, but the God to whom they surrendered their fears is the same One who assures me of His trustworthiness in any current situation. "FOR unto you this morn I send you a snow plow driver..."