I’ve been in a hurry my entire life, it seems. My mom jokes that I’ve been running as long as I could walk. I used to wear that as a badge of honor for my lifelong bent toward athleticism, but lately I’m wondering it had more to do with always being in a rush to reach my destination. Growing up, my brother and I were diametrical opposites in this realm. If I was packed and waiting by the door hours before we left for a family trip, he was the one rummaging through the fridge to make a sandwich in his pjs after the car had already been started.

If there was ever any doubt that God has a sense of humor, less than a decade after leaving home and starting my own family, I gave birth to a little boy who could rival my brother’s sluggish disposition. If hurry is my modus operandi, then Cyrus’s goal in life is to move at a glacial pace. If he could manufacture a greeting card it would probably say something along the lines of “stop and smell the roses”. If we’re being honest, most days it drives me just to the brink of insanity. 

And then conversations like this morning happen.

I’m frantically filling up water bottles, laying out clothes, and zipping up backpacks when I call for the boys to come down and put on their shoes. I’m actually pretty pleased with myself that I somehow managed to squeeze in meal planning and a grocery order before ushering the boys out the door when Cyrus emerges from the stairs, 

“Let me guess, Mom. We’re moving fast because we are in a hurry?” 

I pause long enough to soak in his incredibly cavalier assessment of a situation he has grown very accustomed to and take a peek at my watch. Ten minutes to spare, with backpacks loaded, lunches packed, and everyone dressed and ready. I would have considered it a major win had I not just been put in my place.

I think what I’m learning is that hurry is not so much a physical response as it is a mentality.

I wonder how many times a day I say the word “hurry” to my boys for Cyrus to think hurry is the natural pace of life?  Lately, I’ll catch myself just as the word has left my lips, wishing desperately I could eat it back up. Most days we hurry to get River to preschool, hurry back home to get some homeschool time in without distractions, hurry to the grocery store or the library to return books before it’s time to pick River up. We hurry to get dinner on the table before the bedtime routine just so we can hurry through bath and pjs and a few pages of Winnie the Pooh.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I work hard to maintain rhythm and balance in our home by setting healthy boundaries. Our boys do very few evening activities to protect family dinners around the table and I am constantly reassessing and laying down tasks I can no longer give my best to. We even keep a Saturday’s Sabbath and protect it as best as we can, leaving plenty of space for rest and play and worship. Even still, by the time the boys’ light goes out and Matt and I hit the sofa, it always feels like a whirlwind. Like I’ve just run a marathon and I have only hours to recoup before the next race signal goes off again the next morning.

I think what I’m learning is that hurry is not so much a physical response as it is a mentality. It’s a lifestyle of choosing frantic and rushed over present and peace-filled. If I were to look back over the last month, I’d find very few times I was actually late to something. But the number of times I showed up out of breath and frazzled? Too many to count.

I also think that we as a culture feed this mentality by constantly having our attention divided to fifty different things at once. We leave no space (mentally or physically) for margin and pause. We have learned to tune the silence out with the white noise of our devices and our to-do lists. Yes, society as a whole could benefit tremendously from culling out our calendars and only saying yes to the things we truly can give our best to. But even then, I think we’d have to remind ourselves that it’s okay to slow down. Even with ten minutes to spare, I still found myself rushing through the morning routine.

I don’t want to live my life so consumed with where I’m headed that I miss where I am. And I desperately don’t want my children to grow up believing that hurry is the way of life. So much of my time is spent trying to get my boys to match my pace. I usher them into my hurry when I snap at them for not locating their shoes quickly enough or just do things for them because they aren’t capable of zipping up a jacket or closing a door fast enough.

What if instead of always trying to get our kids to keep up, we slowed to match their pace? Maybe there is an advantage to taking life at a meander rather than a sprint. Maybe they know something we don’t, and the only way we can recover what was lost is to bend down to meet our child’s gaze, and begin to learn the art of being unhurried.