A friend once advised me to journal, saying “It’s the stop that keeps you going.” I found what she said to be true. Pausing to stop and reflect allows me time to consider my next step.
But this ‘stop’ is more than just journaling. It’s a lifestyle of stopping so that we can keep going. It’s a habit of taking time off consciously to recover, uncover and discover.
To recover is to stop to rest physically, to recover from a long day’s work or a tiring week. When we are busy, the first thing that decreases is the number of hours we sleep. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but we must learn to schedule in sleeping time later. Let us not be caught as persons who have to fill up every hour of the day with activities.
To uncover is to be silent before God and ourselves in order to lay bare and allow different concerns/worries/issues/events to surface. To think about what caused us to make a certain decision, why did I feel like that, why did that event/person affect me in this particular way? To uncover is to remove the many masks we’ve hidden behind so that we can see more clearly the feelings, thoughts, and experiences deep within ourselves.
To discover is to be able to see things in a new light, in a fresh way; to be recharged and re-energized; able to make sense of things. When we stop to reflect and be quiet, we find a sense of motivation, desire, and hope to go on, or to go a different direction. When we stop to reflect, we notice new things about ourselves, others, and the situation/circumstance we’re in. Often times, we miss the chance to notice what God is doing in our life, because we’re too busy to stop.
Have you made time for “the stop that keeps you going”? What are some discoveries that you’ve made about yourself or God lately?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Stoppp....!!!
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6 comments:
stop and look. I need to stop and rest . writing down my feeling and journey again.
i want to pause and stop awhile. the long journey is killing me. yet, i dont know how to stop. i keep going on and on.
sigh
hey Anon,
i feel like that too. sometimes i have so many things to do i keep postponing my 'stop'. hmmm... wonder why its so hard to stop. Any idea?
A
Maybe we wouldn't like who and what we've become when we do stop to see or we've gone so far off track. i think even if we don't know how to stop, eventually we will have to - when we hit a wall. So it's either now or then.
i hit a wall once. it was hard!(pun intended). but do i learn from my mistake? nopes. i'm heading for another wall. sigh.... how lah to stop when got so many ministries to be involved in? and sometimes, people dun understand wan. they look at me accusingly when I 'stop' and ask "hey, very free kah. can ask u to do something...?"
For me it takes a clear focus and even loyalty to who at the end we are really serving. Too many times, we I just do, do and do thinking I'm serving God but actually the hard truth its otherwise. Then I realised that God wants a disciplined servant who understood that the world doesn't stop when we stop working. I'm still learning to trust God that aspect.
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