I’d like to begin this piece by thanking my spiritual director, Summer. She has journeyed with me since 2017—long enough to be able to detect meaningful patterns in my spiritual life as well as identify and celebrate areas of growth. She has also walked with me through the valleys, and her consistent pointing to God during dark seasons has created much-needed space for my soul to breathe. 

After I left my counseling job in 2018, I found myself in a several year period of waiting. Waiting for whatever was next, waiting to re-visit the Philippines and the ministry I love, waiting to find the perfect job, waiting for the pandemic to be over, waiting to feel purposeful and whole again after burnout. During my season of waiting, I re-discovered parts of myself that I had forgotten—like the part of me that loves to write but never had the time to do so when I was working and in school. (Also the part of me that loves singing into a hairbrush via at-home karaoke. Drew and I now have about 6 Disney duets in our repertoire.)

While I was waiting for “the thing” to arrive that would make leaving my job and all the heartache of the past 5 years make sense, I learned to bake bread. I grew house plants and watched them thrive. I learned origami and led my first-ever collaborative art project at church as we folded our written prayers into tapestries of hundreds of birds and butterflies.

But it wasn’t all art projects and baking copycat Auntie Anne’s soft pretzels. It was hard. In the beginning, I wept almost daily. I wandered around Marshalls for hours, looking for God knows what. I felt worthless and purposeless and directionless most of the time, especially when I wasn’t engaged in a clear, meaningful project. I wondered if God had kind of forgotten why he made me and if he was taking some time to figure that out, too, before answering my prayers. I felt a little embarrassed for both of us.

In my most recent spiritual direction session with Summer, I described to her how wonderful it was to be on a recent spiritual retreat in California with kindred-hearted people. During the retreat, I felt deeply connected to God, others, and the beautiful world around me. I shared with Summer that experiencing such alignment between my heart, body, mind, and spirit is something I want to continue seeking and experiencing in my day-to-day life.

After listening for a while, Summer responded with this:

“Maybe this is it, Katie. Maybe this is the way God has been inviting you to live all along. Maybe you’re done waiting.”

As she spoke, I felt something tight in my chest begin to release. Could it be true?

What if the whole time I thought I was learning to wait, I was actually learning to live – slowly, intentionally, creatively – at the pace God created me to live?

I wonder if instead of me waiting for God’s divine pre-packaged life plan to arrive on my doorstep, God was actually waiting for me to catch on to the fact that life with Him is simultaneously so much simpler and much, much richer than I could have imagined. Maybe God was inviting me to catch up to his pace – which means slowing down.

After all, how fast did Jesus move while he lived among us?

He moved at the speed of walking.

Jesus only moved and acted at the intentional pace of the Spirit and the pleasure of the Father—which is to say, Jesus moved at the speed of Triune relationship. After the Pharisees accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by healing a paralyzed man, Jesus tells them he was simply acting in utter dependence upon his Father.

Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

…

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

(John 5:19, 30)

When Jesus walked upon the earth, he saw people. Jesus noticed the hurting, the broken, and the outcast as he walked from place to place, and his unhurried pace meant that he had all the time in the world to stop and talk with them. To love them. To heal them. 2000+ years later, Jesus’ pace hasn’t changed. But ours has. We’ve become a society that prioritizes productivity over relationship, materialism over simplicity, and hurry over intentionality. Jesus waited upon the Spirit to determine his every move. As we try pattern our lives after Jesus in our hectic culture, can we say the same? When was the last time we admitted to ourselves something Jesus had no problem acknowledging: “By myself I can do nothing”?

In his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, author John Mark Comer writes,

To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer and only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.

Even though much has changed since Jesus walked the earth, Jesus’ gentle invitation to slow down remains:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

(Matthew 11:28-30, MSG)

In order to learn to walk with Jesus, we first have to un-learn the frantic pace we’ve embraced as a Western society.

As I have learned over the past few years, embracing a ‘walking’ lifestyle can feel excruciating. It can feel like you’re going absolutely nowhere. It can often seem more like “waiting to live” than “living to wait upon the Spirit.” But today, I can see so clearly what I couldn’t see for years in my long season of waiting: slowing down with Jesus, learning to walk as he walks and see as he sees, is the only way to truly live as we were meant to live. As I learn to take Jesus at his word and dance to the unforced rhythms of grace, I am discovering what it means to live freely and lightly.

Am I ridiculously happy and zen all the time?

No. But the invitation of Jesus to live freely and lightly serves as a light house in the storm—an anchor point for me to return to over and over, each time my pace feels more like whiplash than living.

Is it possible to live slowly 100% of the time in a society that seems hell-bent on fast-paced living?

I don’t think so. We live far from Eden, and sometimes our lives just get busy. There is nothing wrong with a full life, though when we equate fullness with busyness we tend to run into trouble. I wonder how many of the things we believe we “have” to get done in a certain timeframe are more dictated by a recklessly rushed society than the movement of the Holy Spirit.  

Friends, what if the life we’ve been waiting for has been here the whole time, buried underneath the smothering weight of demanding expectations, of who we think we should be to appear successful, tangled up in false visions of the good life?

Are we willing to find out what Jesus means when he says, “Get away with me and you’ll recover your life”?

Or do we prefer the world’s version of happiness, which often leaves us emptier than it finds us?

Today, I declare a truth that I will probably try to take back in less than 24 hours as I strive to accomplish something to re-affirm my identity in the eyes of the world. But I’m going to say it anyways, in the form of a prayer:  

Jesus,

I’m done waiting for an outwardly spectacular life.

But I worry that patterning a life after your pace will make me look foolish and unsuccessful.

Today, I choose to trust that walking at an unhurried pace with you is what my soul truly needs, and what the world needs most, too.

When I forget, keep me coming back to you.
Breathe anew in me the unforced rhythms of grace.

Amen.

Going Deeper: Watch the lyric video to Jonathan Ogden’s “Slow Down.” It’s utterly beautiful.

Spiritual Direction is one of the primary practices that helps me slow down in the presence of another as we consider how the Spirit is at work in my life. If you’d like to learn more, my husband Drew has some excellent resources on his Spiritual Direction page.