Are you Living Like You’re in the Army?

There used to be an ad for the Army that suggested enlisted individuals do more before nine a.m. than most people do all day, with the tagline “Be all that you can be”. I suppose the ad was intended to inspire, but it just made me feel guilty, like I really needed to step up my game if I didn’t want to be like all those other slovenly Americans. It probably sounds a bit ridiculous, but the truth is I’ve always carried this oppressive feeling I had to prove myself, driving me to become this perfectionistic, over-achiever that rarely rested. In my mind, I was singing Ethel Mermen, “Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you…” It sounds pretty crappy to say, but I can assure you the burden I was carrying was equally crappy. In my mind, my value was in what I could do and what I could accomplish and if I failed, well it was devastating. It was an exhausting life to live.

My life is much different these days, although the irony is that I probably really do more before nine a.m. than a lot of Americans, yet it’s done in humility, without the burden of attempting to prove something. Like so many others, my mornings start with a list bigger than myself, but as I invite God into my day, I often ask him to help me accomplish all that is set before me. That is rarely everything on my list, but rather what he wants me to accomplish and what he sets before me. Amazingly, he is always faithful to help me complete the things that must be done and to discern what can wait until tomorrow, or the next day or perhaps even next week. I believe that may be part of the reason God wanted us to know the creation story. He wanted us to understand everything doesn’t need to be accomplished in one day. Many things can wait. Today, I baked pumpkin-cranberry muffins. They were on my list for Saturday morning breakfast, and when my teenage daughter came down at eleven p.m. to see why the house smelled so delicious, I understood why God helped me accomplish that seemingly trivial task, while my entire lawn sways in the breeze, like a Kansas wheat field, as I wait for my new mower to arrive.

Are you living like you’re in the army striving to compete with the world and complete your whole list everyday? Trying to be all you can be to feel you have value? Or are you letting go of the striving and letting God lead you in accomplishing the essentials so you don’t miss the really important stuff? Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30) and he wants us to cast our cares on him because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). I can personally testify there is nothing more freeing than letting go.