Permission to Slow Down

I don’t always write and post within the same week anymore, but today I felt that God wanted me to share with you what I learned today (Monday, February 7, 2022).

I have been going 90 miles an hour lately- for months really, and I have been pushing and pushing and pushing. I have this thought that I don’t know enough and need to study more and that needs to happen NOW.

I need to get my TPT store up and my business going all right NOW. I need to get my lessons and plans created and all the extras I am making and do it all like yesterday. I need to have my website up and ….you get the picture.

Plus, write on this blog and my other writing.

And I am still healing and working on processing trauma.

Somehow I thought I should still have energy doing it all, and yet all of the above still wasn’t “enough”.

Guess what? Today, in my counseling session I discovered that I have had this frantic push to make up for lost time. Time lost not just to abuse, but to the years I lost as I have been recovering. Years that I was over medicated and dissociated from life and barely living.

Years everyone else my age spent married, having kids and families, and working. Years I will never get back, but years I have been trying to make up for.

I realized today, with the help of my counselor, that I can’t get those years back. I can’t have what wasn’t there and I can’t make up for it now. No matter how hard or fast I work it will not change the decade I lost.

So, today my counselor encouraged me to rest and grieve the losses from those years and then to come back to God and ask Him to walk with me step by step at the pace God has for me into the future. Allow God to redeem.

I got permission to grieve.

I got permission to feel the losses and the things I will never have.

I got permission to rest.

And I got the reminder to do it all with God.

The grieving, the rest, and the moving forward.

The taking care of myself so that I can do all that God has for me. Permission that is okay if that looks different than other people’s lives and how they work and live.

I know that I serve a God of redemption. I have experienced that not only when I accepted Jesus, but over and over as He has redeemed what Satan wanted to use to destroy my life and God’s plans. Every day is a new day for redemption with God until we have the ultimate redemption as we see Him face to face one day.

So, knowing how it helped me to “get permission”, I now give you permission.

To grieve.

To rest.

To take care of yourself so you can be all God calls you to be as you heal.

Permission to slow down and realize that slow and steady is the pace to stay with as you walk through life.

I needed permission today and I now pass that on to you.

As I close, I remind you to take care of yourself my friends and allow God to redeem and restore your life as you do.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28 (emphasis mine)

© 2022 Susan M. Clabaugh. All Rights Reserved.