Practical Suicide

Got your attention?

I’m reading this amazing book … The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath by Mark Buchanon.

Do you ever have a book you KNOW you are supposed to be reading … RIGHT NOW?   This is that book for me.

Scott bought Buchanon’s book for me for Christmas and I added it to the large stack of books I received.

In January, I was reading (again) One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are and noticed a few quotes that resonated within me … guess where they were from?  Yep, the very book my husband had tucked into my stocking.   A few weeks later,  I was reading the comments on a blog post about stress and ministry … a fellow commenter mentioned this book.

Being the astute observer that I am, I understood the Lord was telling me something.  After all, I had determined my word for this year would be simple … simplicity.   And part of my desire in that was to slow, to be still.   Certainly, learning the habit of Sabbath was a key part of that longing.

I have been slowly reading, stopping to ponder, allowing the wisdom of this tome to sink deep into my spirit.  A couple of weeks ago in this book I now cherish, I read this:

The Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness:  heart and killing.  That is stunningly incisive.  The heart is the place the busy life exacts its steepest toll. (45)

Oh I knew that stress is physically dangerous … that failing to allow margin would exact a price on our bodies.  I even recognized the effects busyness has on my mood, my emotions, my attitude and my spirit.   But this picture … a blending of heart and killing.   Busyness is suicide.

It’s a slow sucking of life … a gradual process of draining the abundance into the emptiness.   It’s the opposite of eucharisteo.  And we do it all. the. time.   Practical suicide … We take the knife of expectation and slice it over the wrist of grace.   We take the gun of keeping up and point it to the forehead of relationships.   We take the pills of success and schedule and swallow them with the dirty water of insecurity and hidden masks … and we are left empty, drained, dead women walking.

I’m guilty of wielding that knife, pointing that gun, and grasping for those pills … and the ugly death pours out of me.  Words I cannot erase, moments I cannot get back.

And yet, Buchanon, writes,

Thankfulness is a secret passageway into a room you can’t find any other way. (67)

And so, the antidote to this suicide is not doing more or less things it is saying more thanks, recognizing more blessings … it is the counting of the one thousand gifts and beyond.

{#128 – 140}

• books that challenge
• praying friends
• late night conversations with my husband
• the girl’s infectious laughter
• family to help and love and pray and encourage
• puppy feet that are forever tripping
• Lenten plans
• inspiring spaces
• Habbakuk 3:16-18
• the love of my sister
• instant communication of prayer needs
• “She’s off the vent!” {you can find daily updates on our niece on Facebook}
• reminders I need

Counting to LIVE,