My life statement is , slow constant and intentional. I have trouble keeping my life between those goal posts. I have always thought that is mostly because I fill my life with too much. I have always thought that this fullness of schedule makes me end up going too fast. I often feel I have to rush because there is so much to do. This makes me lose the ability to be constant. Intentionality also suffers .

In prayer I was asking the Lord to teach me how to slow things down a bit. In answer I heard this line from Star Wars

It is Yoda rebuking Luke for letting his mind run too fast., Yoda says, “All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, hmm? What he was doing.”

Sooo…..Slowing down means taking in where I am and what I am doing? It involves learning to stop thinking ahead to the next thing and learning to be present in what I am doing?

Today was another trip up to Claremont, to see Grace. Usually I let myself feel rushed: Hurry Up, (pray along the way), visit, Hurry back (pray on the way back). I usually squish grocery shopping into the drive back and then when I get home I go quickly on to next thing.

I have wanted for several months to turn one of these trips into a photo trip, but I always feel too rushed to do it.

Today I decided to fight those feelings and to just stop for picture taking. In fact I INTENTIONALLY DECIDED to make several stops.

I learned something. Slowing down and stopping in a planned way did not really significantly change the time it took to accomplish my visit to Grace.

Slowing down did not really change my schedule. But it did challenge my attitude. I found the urge to rush was not actually time bound but emotion bound. My schedule was not rushing me my heart was. The problem was not an external scheduling issue to be solved. It was an internal mindset to be torn down.

All day long I kept finding myself trying to rush to the next thing and I had to fight to keep my mind and heart from looking to the horizon away from where I was and what I was doing.

I am wondering if slowing down is about retraining my brain instead of rethinking my schedule.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO SLOW DOWN YOUR MIND WHEN YOU CAN’T SLOW DOWN YOUR SCHEDULE?