Whether you are more familiar with the song by the Byrds, or the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) there is a time for everything. The song by the Byrds has been stuck in my head for days now, especially the next to last line: A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

My adult life has been hallmarked by a major level of over commitment. I always have way too much going on, way too much to do and never enough time. I manage to meet most of my commitments, but I’m realizing (as I get older, as we all do) that the one thing I am regularly short changing is myself. I never leave myself enough time for me.

A major health crisis at the end of 2016 into 2017 left me with time when I was forced to sit and do next to nothing and it was eye opening. The creative spark that had been missing for a long time started to glow again. The need to write made itself known again. As I got better, I found that the push to over commit was still there. Things needed to be done and for some reason I had decided they needed to be done by me. I am now seriously questioning that stance.

Yes there are a lot of things that need to be done. There will always be a lot of things to be done, and unless I manage to move to Venus where a day lasts 243 earth days (trivial fact here, a year on Venus is only 224.7 days so a year is shorter than a day), I’m NEVER going to have enough time to DO ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD plus all the things that I want to do just for me.

I find myself at a huge crossroads.

I need to digress again. I’m a quilter. I support the Dallas Quilt Show heavily. I rarely enter anything and have often made the joke that the only ribbon I will ever get is the one that says Participant on it. A few years ago I realized that the last thing I put time into was my entry. I did everything else in the world and left my stuff for last so I was rushing it and didn’t give myself time to do a proper job. That’s no way to work at all. The last few years I’ve solved that by not entering anything but I don’t think that’s a solution either. I love to make things. I love to create. I love to have an idea in my head become fabric, and I want the things I create to match up to the vision I have in my head and if I’m going to do that I need to give myself enough time. That means some other things are going to have to give.

The other big lesson I learned out of the Year of Illness is that sometimes it’s ok to sit and do nothing. My parents were raised in the 20’s and 30’s, and as such had some very distinct views on the evil that is sitting and doing nothing. To this day it is VERY hard for me to sit and watch a movie on TV without having something in my hands (sewing or knitting usually) so that the time is not wasted. When I was sick, I could justify the time, because the productive thing I was doing was healing. Now that I’m ‘well’ again, I find myself back in the old trap of I have to be busy 100% of my waking moments.

I think, for the first time in my life, I am realizing that there has to be a balance. A balance between busy and rest. A balance between me and the world. A time to every purpose under heaven. I need to figure out what really matters to me and then build a life that supports that including time for myself to recharge. The biggest luxury I can imagine is giving myself time to recharge. It will be difficult to change a lifetime habit but I think it will be worth it and I can’t wait to see what comes out of the change.

Book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.