Blog 10: 40, 60, 100 Miles per Hour

When was the last time you sat down and took time for yourself, had that bath that you promised, watched your faviourite TV program, had a girls night out, had a boys night in, taken the children on a day out, put the hoover away to have snuggles, had a coffee out, gone to bed early, had a family night, had a couples night in instead of a double date? My guess would be that you haven’t in a very long time and the reason? I don’t want to judge you from the outside in but my bet is that your life is going at around 100 mph and you don’t get time. You are living you life at full speed.

Life seems to pass us by at a record time and we always say that we will do something tomorrow but tomorrow never comes and it really doesn’t. We never stop to have time to ourselves or to our family. If you pushed the break peddle on your life and saw it in slow motion what would you see? Your running around trying to get the kids dinner, running for the last bus after work, running out the house with just about everything, trying to plan the next week, dashing into bed exhausted? My bet is that you wouldn’t even have time to press the break peddle.

Now push the stop button, what would you see around you? Probably things that you have never seen or heard before. The bird right above your head singing a dawn chorus, a man getting down on one knee, the children playing innocently in the park, the cars zooming past you, that person loving you and you haven’t noticed, the person giving you a living look from across the room, the family struggling with everyday life, the old person trying to cross the road and people going about there everyday life.

If I was brutally honest with myself the likely hood of me stopping the pause button is slim let alone the stop button. We have so much going on around us that we just don’t have time for our family let alone ourselves anymore. We want to get on a do things that we need to rather than do things that we choose to do. Why don’t we press the pause or even stop break? Society makes us feel that we have to keep going to be successful but this really is not the case.

The forward steps in life don’t exsist. Your whole life isn’t sorted out! Living life here and now is like taking two steps forward and one step back, its like hoping between good and bad times, its like tiptoeing around feelings of ourselves and of others. We don’t know what direction we will go in, when we will move, whether we change jobs, who we will court, who we will marry, whether we have children, we essentially can plan all we like but at the end of the day God’s plan works and is best for us.

We have many red, amber and green lights in our life. We may find the red lights are more than the green ones. Maybe the red lights are there for us to stop and pause in looking at our own life and realising that we don’t have it all and we can’t control it all. The red lights can be anything from losing a job, getting a divorce, splitting up from someone you love, missing a plane, becoming sick, having an operation, losing a baby or even worse being on a near death experience. At this point we may find it hard to trust anyone, to be happy, to be content or even to get out of bed in the morning. My dear friend I know how you feel and I know what it must seem like, believe me I have had more red lights in my life than green ones.

If you have or are going through this at the moment the only advice I can give to you is to look around and believe that God has a plan. You must have heard of the saying ‘when God closes a door he opens a window’, thats what a red light is. As much as the red lights are hard this is the time to reflect on your life, to pause and refresh and most of all to lean on God.

Take time for yourself, pray, go to the movie you wanted to see, go and grab that coffee with a friend, write down your dreams, head out with family, spend time with your children, head on that girls night out, grab a beer with your mates. This red light is not going to be there forever but will be there for a moments passing, it may seem like a long while but in comparrision with your life it will seem very short. Once the red light has passed and because you took time for yourslef you will have that energy for the green light to come and you can head onwards with fuel in your tank.

Whatever situation you are in right now, whether you are at a red light or a green light or in between make sure you always have time for yourself and that you have time with your family and your loved one. Always believe that God has a plan and he will help and protect you through anytime.