Life Is Not An Emergency

Did you ever feel like you are just rushing through life, always something that must be done, someone needing or wanting something, some place to go.

I am reading Ann Voskamp's book, One thousand Gifts, A Dare To Live Fully Right Where You Are. This is not a book to rush through, to speed read. This book, I am reading slowly, savoring every page.

Ann says what I wish I could say about rushing through life, and she says it so well...this is an excerpt from her book, and it speaks to me and for me.

Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry.  But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing....Through all that haste, I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.

And later she says...

Life is not an emergency.

And yet as I read this book, I realize that I have been living as though life was indeed an emergency.

And still later she says....

Stay calm, enter the moment, give thanks. Life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.

So I am going to take up the challenge, and try to live fully right where I am. It won't be easy, I won't remember all the time.  But I will try.  I will try to be thankful in all things.  I will try to live slow, to live in the moment.  I will try to make a list of one thousand things.

And so I start.......

I am thankful for and grateful to God for.......

1) My family - I am blessed with a good husband, 3 great sons and 3 wonderful daughters.
2) Carhartt bib overalls and jackets, warm hats and gloves and Muckboots in 9 degree weather.
3) My dishwasher - that runs at least twice and usually more every day.
4) My washer and dryer that run several times every day.