Last Sunday, our pastor gave a talk about the need for breathing room in life. He started with a story of wrestling with his four year old son. He said one day they were rough housing on the trampoline in the backyard, when his son kneeled on his chest and said, "Dad, now I'm gonna whoop a can on you!" The little guy had obviously missed some important words in that famous phrase, but his dad got the gist.
He said, there are seasons in life when you just have to "whoop a can." But, he then went on to talk about the need for breathing room. He defined breathing room as the space between your current pace and your limits. So often we push ourself to the limits day after day, and his point was that if your "whoop a can" season is more than just a season, it might be time to reevaluate things and give yourself some breathing room. If you are going and striving and slaving all the time, you are not enjoying your life as you should be, and there is no margin. You've left no room for relationship and rest, and we can't sustain that.
I could so relate. A year ago, my life had been all "whoop a can" and no breathing room. Teaching was taking over my life and leaving me no room for creativity, relationships, or rest. So, I made a big change. I walked away from the job I had always loved, but that now wanted more than I was willing to sacrifice, and decided to take a breath and pursue writing full time.
So I've been breathing, and resting, and dreaming and creating. I breathed myself right into a book project about teaching ironically, and now I actually have to write said book. I have already learned so much this first month. There are words growing on the page. They're not great yet, but they're words. The process of writing a book is requiring me to find that can that I shoved way deep in a closet, open it, and start the whooping, and it's a challenge. The difference from a year ago though, is that now I have the breathing room and energy to do it. Sometimes you have to let go of some things and breathe for a bit to get to the next big thing.
