All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (10 page)

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I GET TOO BUSY
FOR GOD

I
have already confessed that I am tired. I have permacolor dark circles under my eyes. And let it be known that I am so utterly exhausted because I live in America, and here in America, it is un-American to not be busy. In other countries, people like to lounge a bit. They have month-long vacations in the summer and drink tea in the afternoon. I want to move there because I am growing tired of being so tired. I start the day feeling like I am running late. Even if I woke up at four in the morning, I would feel like I had a late start. I get my kids up and prod my husband. Mass mayhem follows as we get three little boys dressed, fed, dressed again because a bottle of syrup has worked its way into sticky trails all over three sets of little boy shirts and pants. (Side note: someone needs to design a full-body bib. I once let the boys eat without their shirts on thinking this would solve the spillage problem, but they kept trying to lick food off their bare chests . . . but I digress.) And this is just the first hour of the morning.

Then the serious “busy” is underway. Every single day is filled to the brim with busy. And not just general busy. Not frivolous busy like reality TV and eating cupcakes. This is really good busy stuff. This kind of busy will make the world a better place. A happier place. At least that’s what I tell myself.

There is kid busy. There is school. There is preschool. There are diapers and more diapers. There is cleaning. There is laundry. Way too much laundry. So much laundry my eyes well up with tears when I think of the laundry. There are playgroups, parent meetings, and school fund-raisers. There is helping in the classroom and subbing at the preschool. There are childhood pictures to be taken and parks to be visited. There is homework, and tired supergirls, beware. You thought when you got out of school, when you had that college diploma in hand, that your homework days were over. Not so. When your kids have homework, once again, you have homework. People need to tell other people these things so that people can prepare themselves for the devastation of having homework again. There are three meals and thirteen snacks to be made each day. And thirteen snacks is not that many. Sometimes kids want fifteen snacks a day. There are books to be read, games to be played, and friends to have over.

And there is work busy. I organize other people’s lives because, goodness knows, mine is a mess. That entails scheduling and childcare and organization so that I can leave my unorganized house to go organize someone else’s house. And there is writing. Somewhere in all my craziness, I must find a quiet moment and a clean table to put my computer on so that I can try to pull together some semblance of order out of my scattered brain and write with wittiness and hope.

Then there is church busy. There is house prep for gatherings at our house. There is setup at the theater on Sunday when everyone meets for our large gathering. There is worship practice. There is Sunday school prep. There is the actual service. There is the occasional mom’s group and ladies’ night out. There are retreats and denominational meetings. There are missions trips and community outreaches. We don’t play around when it comes to church.

Now, really, tired supergirls, must I go on? I didn’t even mention trying to set aside time for dating my husband, one-on-one time with the kids, getting together with friends, planting flowers, doing the bills, or sleeping. Did I mention sleeping yet? Oh, and Jesus. For goodness’ sake, how could I forget to mention finding time for Jesus? I guess it would be because I am so very busy that I frequently forget that I must make time for the Savior of my soul. And somehow, some way, he seems to be the one person I don’t ever write down in my organizer. When I’m actually using my organizer. Sometimes I forget to use it when I am so busy.

Supergirls everywhere are struggling to find a balance between work, family, church, friends, and Jesus. We are cramming our lives full to overflowing and we can barely breathe. There are so many good, valid, important things to be done along with the fact that we just don’t know how to order our lives, how to maximize our potential, or how to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished.

That’s when Miz Do Good enters the picture. She is the rules-and-regulations gal that lives in your head. She likes to help you out in your Christ-following journey, saying things like, “If you read five chapters of Scripture, then you’re good. Three? Not so good. No Bible reading this week? You’re on the fast track to the fiery pit of destruction.”

Or she’ll mention church attendance. “Wow, so you think you’re doing okay with just Sunday mornings? That’s interesting. You may want to rethink that.”

And she also likes the saying “How can you say no?”

She can be very encouraging about your acts of Christlikeness. Reminding you of all the goodness that you are already pouring yourself into, like that time you spent with your grandma at the nursing home or the run for cancer you did with your group from work. But then she just likes to ask little questions like, “But what about the orphans in Ethiopia? You should probably go on that missions trip. How can you say no to something that important?”

Or she’ll mention something like, “You’ve been doing a fantastic job reading to your kids, but what about your friend Rita? She needs you to be more available. You better figure out how to spend some more time with her.”

But that is where the direction ends, because she likes to be vague. She doesn’t seem to know how you will squeeze in three more things onto your be-more-like-Jesus to-do list. But she knows that you can absolutely handle three more things, maybe even four. She has great faith in your ability to save the world, single-handedly, and still have time for devotions.

My mom told me that when she was little, she was taught that the word
JOY
stands for
J
esus,
O
thers, and
Y
ou. She used to sing it in a song about how joy equals putting Jesus first, then sandwiched in the middle you put others, and then whatever you do, put yourself last and you will have joy. Like the three slices of the proverbial pie of how to live your life. But if that is the case, does housecleaning fit in under the “you” category because you like having your house clean or the “others” category because you are clearing a path from the living room to the bathroom so that “others” can get through? And which part of the pie should go for that budget you need to finish at work and that charitable book drive you agreed to help out with? And there is only so much pie, you know.

Besides that, the world at large is telling us supergirls that we need some
me
time. That we have neglected our own needs and we need good boundaries and such, so that our lives can be more productive. So maybe we shouldn’t put ourselves last because if we don’t care for ourselves, then how can we care for others? So how much of your life’s pie is allocated to
me
time? Does
me
time include the times when a tired supergirl is sitting in her cubicle at work by herself? Because if not, we are going to have to pencil it in around 1:27 in the morning, when we are fast asleep, because the rest of our day is jam-packed with business meetings, family meal times, and a workout session with Helga, our personal trainer. And as for Jesus, we think he needs a whole pie dedicated just to him because our real-life pie has no slices left. Supergirl alert! You can’t do it all. Nope! It just cannot be done.

Forget the whole pie thing. If we are endlessly slicing our pies, at the end of the day, all we supergirls have left to offer Jesus is a few crumbs. Time with God can’t be something we try to squeeze in between, say, 2:00 and 2:27 in the afternoon. We can’t just offer up a chunk of time to the God of the universe. We have to offer him ourselves. All of us. All of our time. We can’t look at spending time with God as a set “devotional time.” We have to emulate the one who came in the flesh and looked at spending time with God as a “devotional life.”

Jesus modeled complete devotion to God. He was available to God all day long. Any time of day or night, he was ready. Just give the word and he was willing to go, do, be, say whatever God had for him at that moment. That included attending weddings or teaching in the synagogue. He wasn’t boxed in by a certain amount of minutes spent in prayer or the weekly couple of hours spent in a pew or by what other people thought he should be doing for God.

The Pharisees, the Miz Do Goods of their time, tried to get Jesus locked into their God time frame. They wanted him to keep the Sabbath holy. That is what their religious culture had designated as “Time for God.” It is all laid out neatly in the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”

In Luke 6:6–11, the story of Jesus’s thoughts on the Sabbath unfolds:

On another Sabbath day, a man with a deformed right hand was in the synagogue while Jesus was teaching. The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees watched closely to see whether Jesus would heal the man on the Sabbath, because they were eager to find some legal charge to bring against him. But Jesus knew their thoughts. He said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand here where everyone can see.” So the man came forward. Then Jesus said to his critics, “I have a question for you. Is it legal to do good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing harm? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” He looked around at them one by one and then said to the man, “Reach out your hand.” The man reached out his hand, and it became normal again! At this the enemies of Jesus were wild with rage and began to discuss what to do with him.

Jesus kept messing with the religious folk. Asking them to think. Showing them that time with God isn’t limited to one day and one day only. And time for God certainly doesn’t revolve around keeping a set amount of rules or social mores. Time with God is about healing and giving life, not about keeping rules or maintaining others’ expectations.

The masses had designs on Jesus too. They had big plans for him. They weren’t out to destroy him like the Pharisees; they just wanted to suck the life out of him with all of their needs and their expectations.

In Luke 4:42–43, Jesus is on the move. He gets away from the thick of things to have some alone time. He has just finished a tour of casting out demons and healing every person he touched, and the passage says,

Early the next morning Jesus went out into the wilderness. The crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them. But he replied, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places, too, because that is why I was sent.” So he continued to travel around, preaching in synagogues throughout Judea.

It’s interesting that he is very much aware of his purpose, of who he is and where he should be at any given moment. When the people think he should be worshiping, he is partying; when they think he should be out performing miracles, he is by himself praying. A lot of us supergirls think,
If I get
my devotions in before I head off for work, I can check that
off of my to-do list
.

Jesus didn’t knock off a thirty-minute window and think,
Well, that’s done. I’ve spent my time with God for the day.
Nor did he crumble at the expectations of others, thinking,
I’ve really let these Samaritans down. I better cast out
a few more demons to get them off my back.

He spends time in the wilderness. He spends time at parties. He spends time healing people. He spends time sleeping. He spends time visiting with friends, and he spends time utterly alone. And all of it, he spends aware that he is in God’s presence and that God is working in him, through him, and ultimately, he even gives his last breath so that we supergirls might do the same.

We tired supergirls like to have a system. We are looking to make our lives meaningful by the things we do, whereas Jesus’s life was meaningful because of who he was. The things he did, the miracles he performed, the teachings he gave, the love that poured out from him, came from the fact that his whole being was immersed in the presence of God—all day, every day. And the whole process of being jailed, crucified, and resurrected from the dead means that we also can be immersed in the presence of God—all day, every day. Since Jesus took on our sinfulness and gave us his righteousness, there is nothing keeping us from hanging out with God, being available to him, and being who God meant us to be. We no longer have to try and cram him into one neat little section of our day; we can let him overflow into every nook and cranny of our year. We can open ourselves up to his direction, his presence, his peace from Monday morning in the office through Sunday evening small group. We don’t have to rely on what other people think we should be doing or how much time we should allot to our spiritual upkeep.

If we are immersing ourselves in God’s presence, letting him in on all of our business, we can tell Miz Do Good to take a hike. Then we supergirls can ask our heavenly Father what it is exactly that he would like us to be doing on this fine day, whether that is staying up all night praying for our co-worker whose marriage is on the rocks or going to an eighties party with big hair and Kool and the Gang blaring in the background. And then just like Jesus, instead of being overwhelmed by the busyness of life, we can go about doing our Father’s business. And that would be super.