Overcharged and Owned

Hi My name is Rachel and I've been owned by God.....again.

I've never really considered myself a perfectionist (okay maybe sometimes).
Or a person who gets stressed out a lot.
Or someone who takes on too many hats at one time.

I've always felt like I know when to be still.
Known when to chill out, and calm down.
And if you know me, you know that I'm one of the least neurotic/panicky people.

When it comes to life, I tend to cruise on by.

But today God owned me, through my circumstances and the advice of my mom. This week is supposed to be a break from work, and yet I've been finding myself with a busier schedule than the entire semester. I thought I could handle it, because it didn't seem like a lot of work, most of it I wanted to do, and therefore my work load wouldn't be that heavy (or so I thought.)

But today, amidst the busiest day of the week, everything came to a halt...I lost my keys. Actually I retract that statement because I know where they are, they're just unattainable at this time. And because I couldn't find my keys, I was forced to not do some of things I was supposed to do. Instead I found myself waiting for over an hour, sitting in the hallway, in front of my door, eating honey nut cheerios with one of my best friends. It was the most rest I'd had all week.

It's funny that just the other day I was talking to my friend about the Sabbath, and how it's a commandment we so often forget or dismiss. And yet God made it the 4th commandment, above honoring your parents, or not murdering or lying. So it obviously must be important.

But in a world that tells us "time is money" we forget to rest. We forget to recharge our own batteries, although that never seems to happen with our Ipods or Blackberries. We often go without thinking too much about it, running from meeting to class, from lunch to coffee, from e-mail to phone call.

And we simply forget to be still.

God knows that too often we do this to ourselves. He knows how easy it is to get burnt out, frustrated, or stressed out. He didn't make our bodies to be machines that run on little sleep and caffeine pills. Instead he made our bodies need 8 hours of sleep, need to sit down once in a while, and need to just breathe.

And when we're too busy trying to get everything done, sometimes he pulls the switch just to make sure that we're taken care of. He pulls the plug right before we have the chance to explode, and lets the computer cool down, so it doesn't get overworked.

And sometimes he just hides the keys.