What’s a hurried heart? It’s racing thoughts and flutters of anxiety, living by “should” instead of grace, feeling you have something to prove and you’re always one step behind. I’ve been there, and I imagine you have too. Maybe you’re there right now.
Jennifer Dukes Lee knows hurried hearts well. On this week’s More than Small Talk episode she shared how in the past year the pandemic has forced so many of us to have less external activity. But we’ve lived in flight-or-fight mode with more internal activity than ever.
What helps our hurried hearts? Giving ourselves permission to grow slow, something Jennifer learned on her family’s fifth generation farm and shares in her book, Growing Slow: Lessons on Un-Hurrying Your Heart from an Accidental Farm Girl. She says…
“I commission you to go out and do the incredible work you’ve been doing all along at the pace of a person and not an Olympic sprinter.
You have so much permission right here. You have permission to stop building something bigger and faster. You have permission to stop multitasking yourself to the brink of exhaustion. You have permission to live a quiet, less benchmark-y life. You have permission, even, to be unproductive.
I pray that you will know, deep down within yourself, how precious you are. You are beyond worth, beyond compare. Your worth is not tied to your speed or success rate. Do you see what a wonder you are? Oh, I pray you do.
May you never again ask yourself a questions like, “Does this even matter at all?”
It all matters.
The little things are the mattering things. The times you dropped everything to show up for the weary friend. The times you paced the hallways, in the dark, with a fussy baby in your arms. The times you read one more bedtime story, sent one more heartfelt text message, gave one more dollar, read one more verse, offered one more minute of your time, pulled out one more chair, planted one more seed. Oh, friend, it all mattered. It matters still. These are the “well-done” things.
Awaken to the restless love you were made for.
Let your soul open up, so wide, so stretched out–wide as a country sky–that it makes you cry.
May you have the courage to grow slow. May you know that when you grow slow, you grow deep….
And may you never, ever forget for a single second that God enjoys watching you grow slow.”
– Jennifer Dukes Lee, Growing Slow
There’s a pair of Canadian geese that come back to our pond each year. The mama won’t leave her nest for weeks. I watch her in wonder through all the days when it seems there is no progress, no growth, nothing to show for her efforts. She never wavers until her goslings waddle their way out of the nest and into the world. She challenges me, as Jennifer does, to remember the power of perseverance, the strength in choosing to be still, the great worth in waiting.
Here’s the truth I want to live today: Growing slow in a fast world is an act of faith not failure.
Cheering You On,
Holley Gerth
