I've started noticing a pattern in my life over the past few years. I've started realizing that somehow nearly every season feels like a busy season. My husband is a high school pastor and I work part time on our high school staff (the rest of the time I stay home with our 9-month-old baby girl), so every year for us has kind of a natural ebb and flow depending on what we have going on in ministry. There absolutely are seasons that are more full and seasons that are less full. But sometimes I'm so tired by the time we get to those seasons or months that are less full, I miss out on simply enjoying the rest they provide. But I can't blame it on ministry. I can't blame it on my job. I mean, I could, technically, but not really. Ministry can make for a very full life. But I believe there's more to it than that. This is bigger than that. I think this comes down to how I do things. How I live my life.

A couple years ago, I realized that my investment in relationships had slowly dwindled. When friends and I would try to make plans, I often said, "Yes! Let's do it, maybe after _______________ when my life slows down a bit." And then I was tired. And things didn't really slow down.

I cringe when people ask me to hang out or ask to plan a meeting with me and start their initial invitation with, "I know you're super busy, but..." That's tough to hear. Is that the impression I give? I don't want to just be busy as a way of life. Sometimes in ministry there is an ongoing pressure to achieve, to perform, to be "doing" things in order to "seem" effective. Sometimes the pressure comes from others, but sometimes it simply comes from inside of me. The pressure I put on myself is often the heaviest to bear.

A couple years ago, summer was winding down and my husband, Michael, and I were looking ahead to fall. We started making plans and dreaming about all the things we could say yes to now that our "busy season" was wrapping up. An international missions trip, a retreat with our students, vacations, seminary for Michael, performing in a huge country music concert at our church, and definitely slowing down were on the horizon for us. But for some reason it wasn't all adding up. We couldn't figure out how to make it all work. The slow season was already beginning to feel ... not slow. Not to mention, we had just bought our first house over the summer, so renovation and moving took up much of August - our other "breathing month."

Something's gotta change. Otherwise nothing will change.

I can be a little emotionally inconsistent when it comes to schedule stuff. Sometimes I want to slash everything out of the calendar, but other times everything sounds fun and doable. On this particular day, Michael and I were doing the dance - the balancing, scheduling dance, trying to get on the same page about the next few months. In the moment, I was suggesting that we do some kind of fall retreat with our students. I was suggesting adding another thing. Michael looked at me and said something like, "Why is it that sometimes you want to add more to our schedule? And other times you don't want to add any more? I don't want to do one more thing." He had a point. We took some time soon after that calendar conversation to have a little dinner date on the back patio of our local Panera and began asking some of the hard questions.

What if our busy season has become more than a season?

Why does it feel like we are always in one?

What can we do about it?

How do we say yes to God in the ways He wants us to?

How can we/ should we say no even to things that seem good (ministry opportunities, mission trip opportunities, etc.)

That was an important conversation for us. One that we'll probably revisit many more times. For us in that season it meant saying no to the big mission trip so we could say yes to doing all of our already-committed-to, weekly ministry really intentionally and really well. It meant saying no to planning an extra student retreat so we could have say yes to a short getaway with our volunteer discipleship staff and invest extra deeply in them so that they feel encouraged and equipped as they invest in students.

Growing up, my mom had a saying that always stuck with me: "Whenever you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else." You may not always be aware when you say yes, but because you said yes, it may mean that you have to say no to something else that comes along. Conversely, whenever you say no to something, you leave room and space and margin in your life to say yes when an opportunity arises. There is always an exchange. My wise mother also always used to compare life to a piece of notebook paper, the kind with margins. She likened it to writing a paper and leaving white space in the margins, so that if you need to add an idea or make an adjustment, you have space in the margin to do so. But if you write from edge-to-edge, using up every inch of that margin, editing, adding, or improving that writing becomes difficult. It gets messy. Margin is good. Space is good. A schedule that is not packed edge-to-edge is good.

I feel like the Lord is teaching me about this all over again in my current season. The importance of evaluating and re-evaluating the pace of our lives has been especially clear in some conversations with a few close friends this past week. One was an honest conversation about my own pace with my sweet husband. And the others were conversations with close friends about the pace of their lives. These same themes have come up over and over again.

It was a privilege to listen and a gift to sit across from those friends as they said things like,

"I'm just tired."

"I keep saying I'm fine but I'm not fine."

"I don't think I'm okay."

"I want to figure out why I keep saying yes to things and I want to work through some things going on in my life."

And what I loved about their honesty was that they weren't just complaining about busyness. They were ready to shift something. They were telling the truth about the condition of their hearts as a result of the condition of their lives. Busy, full, fast, a pace that they concluded they can't sustain long term. And so they're creating space. Saying no to some things. Saying yes to some life-giving things and paying attention to their hearts and their souls because they don't want to keep living like this. And I think that is beautiful.

I'm still asking a lot of questions. The Lord has my attention and I truly, deeply, want to know more about what this looks like lived out. And it will change, again and again, but I want to keep asking those questions. I don't want to be the girl who is always in a busy season, I don't think that's what any of us really crave. Living on purpose? Yes. Being willing and available? Yes. Living life for Jesus to the fullest? Yes. But busy? No.

I think whether you're in high school, college, working full-time, single, married, parenting, serving in ministry, or even retired, this is something we all wrestle with. I don't know that we will figure it out, once and for all, this side of Heaven. We live in the tension created by our schedules, our desires, our dreams, relationships, commitments, ambitions, and the mundane tasks of our lives. The give and take. The push and pull. And managing and surrendering and pressing in and stepping back works differently for each of us.

I don't believe there is a formula for exactly how this looks. I wish it were that simple. I'm thankful for the Lord's grace in helping me navigate this, and for the friends and family who walk alongside me as I do.

But no matter who you are, it is worth asking the question, "Has my 'busy season' become more than a season?"