Navigating the Chaos in a Culture of Busyness

In this episode, CCEF faculty discuss the pervasive issue of busyness. They explore how busyness can often be a form of suffering, how our misguided desires can exacerbate the experience, and how the Lord's compassion makes a difference. They discuss why it's hard to say no to good things and the costs of busyness, and they highlight the freedom that comes from the reality of God's sovereignty and his presence in our busy world.

Mentioned in this episode: Read an important update from CCEF's Board of Trustees here.

00:00 Introduction and Leadership Transition
01:27 Understanding the Experience of Busyness
03:47 Busyness as a Form of Suffering
08:52 The Broader Context of Busyness
13:33 Misguided Desires and Identity in Busyness
17:46 Entrusting Our Days to God
19:56 Why It’s So Hard to Say No
22:35 The Cost of Busyness
27:27 Practical Strategies for Navigating Busyness
33:10 Seeing the Lord at Work

Hello and welcome to the CCEF podcast, Where Life and Scripture Meet. My name is Gunner Gundersen and I serve as the Dean of Faculty here at CCEF. And I'm here today with my colleagues, Darby Strickland and Esther Liu. And before we get into our topic for today, you will notice that a very familiar voice is missing. Alasdair Groves will not be joining us today or into the future. We're in the midst of a leadership transition at CCEF with Alasdair stepping down as Executive Director and Jonathan Holmes filling in as our Interim Executive Director. Alasdair remains our brother, our friend, our partner in gospel ministry. If you do want to learn more, you can see the official announcement at our website and the link will be in the show notes for you. As the voice of the podcast, Alasdair for a number of years has extended the truth and wisdom and hope of Scripture to us. And I know I've appreciated his friendship, his gospel optimism, certainly his rich insights.

If you'd like to share any ways that Alasdair has blessed you, please feel free just to send a note in to podcast@ccef.org. That's podcast@ccef.org. And we'd be happy to share your words of encouragement with Alasdair. And as we continue on with Where Life and Scripture Meet, we remain committed to sharing insights that will connect the treasures of Scripture to the troubles of life. And we do plan to keep releasing new episodes twice each month.

And so in that vein, today Darby and Esther and I are going to be talking about a topic that's both prevalent and often mentioned in our culture. It's really something that we all face in different seasons of our lives, even sometimes predictable seasons of our years. And it's something that really can become a permanent feature of our lives when we let it. And it's the issue of busyness, the issue of busyness. And when we kind of each ask each other how we're doing, I think we often hear some version of “I'm busy” or “Life is busy,” right? We often say that, we often hear it. It's kind of the go-to answer. And one thing I've tried to do is when I constantly find myself saying a certain word or phrase or hear it being said but going undefined, I try to stop sometimes and go, what do I mean by that? What do we mean by that? And I'm curious, what do you think we mean when we say, “I'm busy” or “Life is so busy?” What do you think we're describing?

Yeah, I think we're describing something that's quite a phenomenon in our culture, because like you're saying, we're hearing it all the time. And I think many people mean different things by it. I talk to young mothers, and their busyness just means the demands of keeping up with their household and up with their children. When I hear from professionals, it's like the tyranny of their inbox, or they're working around the clock. When I think of myself, it's trying to balance work and home and relationships. And so I think it's a great word, like you're saying, to pause and think, what do I mean when I say it? And when I'm talking to someone, what are they trying to convey when they're saying to me, “I'm so busy”? It's almost like an anguished cry.

Yeah, I certainly think of seasons where there are a lot of obligations piling up, where the schedule is filled with commitments, either for yourself, for your kids, for other people. Yeah, just that sense of responsibility, that sense of life being full, the sense of moving at a pace that is faster than maybe we would prefer, and maybe even embedded in that a sense of tiredness in it, a sense of those obligations taking up a lot of energy and leaving us a bit harried and wary and frenetic. So yeah, just some of the descriptions I can think of when I hear the word busy.

Yeah, as we're talking, I'm hearing both the facts of busyness, the things on my calendar, the responsibilities that I hold that you could write into a job description or that are just written into our nature as a mother, for example, of young children, that we are going to do these things. They are going to be on our plates or our lists or our calendars or our minds. And then there's also the experience of busyness. Darby, you mentioned that anguished cry component. Could you talk a little bit more about that, what you're hearing from people in that anguished cry and what's being communicated about busyness and their experience of it?

Yeah, I think even starting with myself, I had a really busy week and a very busy weekend. And so people ask me how I have been. I said, “I've been busy.” But I would probably say to my husband, right, someone who knows me and I feel more comfortable with, “I'm really weary. I'm exhausted. I'm not sure I have the energy that I need to keep going on tomorrow.” So it becomes for me, you know, when someone asks you how you're doing, you can say good and it can mean a lot of things. So I think it's almost a way of communicating, “I'm suffering, but I don't want to let you know all that's behind my experience of being busy.” So I know for me, it's a summary word that encapsulates a lot of emotion. Most of it just has to do with being worn down and worried about being able to maintain what I have, what I'm called to do next.

So worn down and worried, I think that's helpful and alliterated, which always helps. But I heard you use a word though that I don't think we often use probably when we talk about busyness and that's the word suffering. But the things you're describing are absolutely that. And when you talk about worn down and worried, or maybe Esther used the word kind of hurried or harried, that you just almost feel harassed by your own life in some ways and by the responsibilities that you have. Can we talk a little bit more about how can busyness be a form of suffering and where that leads us in terms of thinking about busyness maybe a little bit differently.

I think even the question itself is helpful to explore because a lot of times, even in my own busyness, the resolution is just, “I should be less busy. I need to do less.” And it becomes kind of like a “I'm doing it to myself. This is my fault. I need to do something to fix it. There's something wrong with me. There's something I'm doing wrong, etc.” But to frame it in the context of suffering, I think it is really hard. And I think it's helpful to offer that reality to people when a lot of times the response is “Just be less busy.” There's a sense in which we miss kind of, this is actually really hard and I can sit in that and I can acknowledge that and I can even bring that to the Lord or bring that to other people, vulnerably. Because the reality is, I think a lot of us, if we could choose the lives that we lived and the pace that we could live our lives, a lot of us would choose to be less busy.

And yet it's the season of life that we're in, the realities, the things that are imposed upon us, other people's expectations, just life and circumstances happening that place us in a position where we are busy and going, doing more than we would like to even, or that we would choose for ourselves. I think it's just really precious to acknowledge that it is suffering, it is hard, and there's compassion in the midst of that, not just, I need to stop doing this to myself.

Yeah, because if we believe it's up to our management, it's just a way that, for me, guilt creeps in. If I did this, if I made these choices, I'd be less busy, right? And so then the guilt almost is paralyzing for me versus saying, no, you're actually, you're managing your responsibilities and they're quite heavy. There's not really many of my responsibilities I can take off my plate. And so that just gives me a different solution to the problem. If I'm overburdened, I would look at busyness of being overburdened, then I frame it differently, versus busyness is my failure.

Yeah, it's striking because if some of our busyness can be a form of suffering, then the response that we see to that from the Lord is compassion. And that's often a place that we might not go when it comes to thinking about our own busyness and how the Lord engages us in it is with a sense of compassion. Instead it's a sense of, “I must not be managing my own life well enough. And if I can manage my time better, or if I could be more efficient, or if I could get my schedule optimized,” whatever the case might be, whatever someone's personality might be, there's this sense almost of overreaching responsibility that then even, I know for me, can create a greater sense of busyness. There's actually another thing to do, which is to manage the busyness better. And it becomes another thing on the list or woven throughout the list in kind of a poisonous way, if you will, spiritually speaking.

Yeah, to that point, I remember an article that I read about pastors and ministry in some sort of psychology journal going into statistics, etc., of burnout and such. And it just made this point that I'll probably butcher to some degree, but something along the lines of there's an ecological context to pastors burning out. There's a contextual reality that pastors in particular are embedded in that makes the tendency to veer towards burnout likely and listing some of those variables as there are a lot of times where people have a lot of expectations for their pastor. They want them to be accessible at all times. They want them to be good at preaching, but also good at counseling, but also faithful with visitations, but also really good at teaching Sunday school, etc. And this author of this article just acknowledging there's a context, there's an ecology to pastors who feel worn down and who feel really busy and feel like they can't get a grip on their schedules. And I remember reading that article, I just wish that I had had that acknowledgment earlier, that it's not just, oh pastor, you should slow down, oh pastor, you should know your limitations and not overwork yourselves, but to understand the context sometimes that pastors can be in, the expectations that are placed on them, that there's a context that they're living in that just grew my compassion for this entire group of people who might very well want to be less busy, but it's not that easy. And so to your point, Gunner, of when we can see busyness as a form of suffering as well, and we can acknowledge some of the context that contributes and fuels some of that busyness or fuels that sense of need for busyness to be a requirement of our lives, there is a lot of room for compassion rather than “I just need to do better and manage my life better.” So, anyway, what you were just saying just reminded me of this article I read years ago that was a paradigm shift for me and it grew my compassion for a lot of people who are navigating busyness and struggling through it.

That's such a helpful way to think about those expectations, kind of an ecosystem of expectations that are self-generated sometimes, generated from others, generated from cultures and subcultures that give us certain lenses from which to view these things and how to evaluate ourselves and how we're doing and how inaccurate those things can be, even if there are laced through them things that are biblical and good and right and should be expectations that we have. I think of how different stories in Scripture actually address that issue of unrealistic expectations. I think of Exodus 18 and Jethro and Moses and the story of Moses's father-in-law's advice to him that you are not going to make it and you are not going to lead effectively if you keep doing everything by way of offering judgments for the people and being the one-stop shop for what needs to happen leadership-wise. And then also in Acts 6 with the establishment of deacons where there's this clear picture that there is particular tasks that these church leaders need to be committed to and involving themselves in and engaged in, but if they try to do everything, it's going to actually get in the way of the purposes of God and the advancement of the gospel in that situation. And in a very, very personal way, they themselves just will not be able to do it. It's not going to be sustainable and God creates a different kind of ecosystem and adjusts it for those leaders, both in Old Testament and New. And I'm so thankful for those examples that are very nitty gritty on the ground, and they show even how God has called us to craft some of those ecosystems, structurally even.

Well, and he's not unaware of our ecosystem, right? So part of it is just even slowing down, because oftentimes we feel in the midst of the chaos we have to somehow stop it, stop the chaos. We have to untangle it, we have to create an order, versus asking him, who sees all the things far better than we can even perceive our own situation and our own circumstance. He sees all the burdens that are being placed on us, and he knows how to help lift those burdens from us. And I just think that's just a really helpful reality that he sees what we cannot perceive in the midst of busyness and just asking him, “What am I missing? Where can I get help? How can you help me? How can I carry this season in a different way?”

So we've talked a little bit about how suffering can be kind of on us in busyness or to put it a better way, how just busyness can be a form of suffering, it can be an expression or an experience of suffering. At the same time, our hearts are engaged in the process and our hearts are so easily let astray, so easily attached to and hold onto things that we think are life-giving or we think give us something. And busyness I think can be one of those things. One thing I sometimes hear in others and I hear certainly in myself when the response is given, “I'm so busy,” is almost like the badge of honor. And it's giving me something, although it's a bit undefined in those conversations, it's giving me something that it's like I need. And so I continue in it and I don't step back and evaluate it. When it comes to how we can be misguided and stray in our busyness, how might we talk about that? What might be some of the things that we feel like we need that we're getting from our own busyness? What are some ways maybe that it serves us in ways that are a backwards way of service? It's not doing us good, but it's kind of serving those passions.

I would say it always feels good to be needed and desired and wanted and to be at the center of things. Sometimes it's hard to step back from places the Lord wouldn't prioritize our presence being, because it feels good to be needed by others and driving things and so I think that's part of it. There's an identity wrapped up in what we're able to accomplish, but also an identity wrapped up in how other people view what we've been able to produce.

I think related to that Darby, can't even count the number of times where I could probably trace seasons of busyness to a deep need to feel like I need to measure up and earn something, whether that's approval or someone's pleasure or affirmation or attention and how much of that was rooted in just a desire to be praised. And then I think also on the flip side of that, as I process through what led to some of these seasons of busyness is also finding pride and not being a burden to other people. And seasons where I refuse to ask for help and reach out to others, even if there was probably too much on my plate because of the desire to show everyone that I can do it on my own. I can do life on my own. I'm self-sufficient. I can do it. I got this. And yeah, how much of that was maybe rooted in fear of man and maybe some earnest desire to be a blessing to others, maybe that being warped over time and not acknowledging that part of loving others actually is displaying neediness. And part of loving others is actually letting them serve us sometimes rather than me trying to keep up with a very busy full life that maybe is beyond what I was capable of sustaining. So definitely see a lot of myself and my own heart in busyness as you were referencing, Darby.

And again, I would just say like that as you're talking Esther, it's just making me think of how Christ offers us that invitation to abide in him. Oftentimes we refuse that invitation because we even feel like we're a burden or we have to fix things before we come to him or somehow he'd be disappointed with us if we don't do things in a certain way or can't finish our list. It's just that sweet invitation that he's just saying, abide in me. And apart from me you can do nothing. And in seasons of busyness that’s really hard, it’s been hard for me to really grasp that, that I really have to be tethered to him in those seasons, because he's often the first thing that can go.

You know, one striking thing as I've continued to live life has been just the constancy of sleep that I can just for, you know, sixteen, eighteen hours of the day really feel like everything rides on me and what I do, how much I accomplish, if I get the things done that I need to. And that can keep not only a schedule that's busy, but also a spirit that's really busy in an unhealthy way. And when I reflect on the fact that, know, for six to eight hours of every night, depending on how much sleep I'm getting in that season, I'm completely helpless and I contribute nothing, and the Lord, the Sovereign Lord, is running the universe and all the details of it and is at work in the areas of my life and the people's lives whom I love, he's at work in even the ways I'm longing for while I am contributing nothing. Such a good reminder of, just a physical reminder, a regular nightly reminder of what it means to rest in the Lord. And I want to carry that mentality even as I go about through my day when I'm awake and continue to know that he is ultimately the One working. And while I have responsibilities, I do make a contribution, there are important things I get to do by privilege of being his image bearer and his child, this doesn't ride on me ultimately. And I know at least for me that helps me to go about a busy day in a different way.

Well, it allows you and me, right, to entrust our days to him, because he's always at work and so we don't have to be. And I just think that's sweet reminder that should help us increase our humility in such situations. Yeah, because he doesn't need us. He delights in using us, but we often miss that memo and we do think, “It's up to me,” and we're not resting. When I look at my list at the beginning of day, I'm like, there's no way I can do this. My husband often says, “Well, you will get done what God needs you to get done, and he will help you do it.” And he has. And it's just always a sweet reminder of, yeah, it's not up to you.

One just thing I've often heard that came to mind, I think is Esther, you were sharing earlier was this related idea where some of us will sometimes say, “I have a really hard time saying no. I have a really hard time declining an invitation. I have a really hard time, you know, stepping away from something.” But there's the idea of saying no at times where looking back, we realize we should have; “I should not have committed to that. I should not have said yes to that.” Do you have any thoughts about what can make it so hard to say no to things? When again, looking back, we realize that would have been wiser to say no to, and I could have known that at the time, but I was caught up in something that made it so hard to say no.

I feel like a lot of times the things that are being asked often are good things. And so even just the ability to slow down in a moment to discern even if this is a good thing, is this really what the Lord has for me to do and engage in? I feel like that takes a level of clarity in the moment that I don't necessarily always have when I'm committing to something and then later on being like, I don't know if I should have. But I also feel like the reality of really not wanting to disappoint other people. And I feel like often saying no to people entails some level of disappointing others. We like to be people who are there for everyone and can be all things to everyone. And I think the reality of limitations is hard and bitter at times because it forces us to confront that we can't be all the things to all the people. But it's really uncomfortable and it's really hard and even a grief, a genuine grief that I would love to be there for you but I can't always be and I can't be that this time, and how do I entrust that disappointment but also you to the Lord. But I feel like that sense of disappointing others, oftentimes that's more uncomfortable than the discomfort of being busy. And so I'll often choose the discomfort of being busy and overcommitted than saying a hard no that I know would hurt someone's feelings or disappoint someone. So that's just the first thought that comes to my mind of why it can be so tempting to overcommit and say yes to things that maybe aren't the wisest things for me to say yes to in any given moment.

So we've talked a little bit about how busyness can be a form of suffering and then also about how busyness can also be related to our sinfulness or lack of wisdom or desire to be more than what God has called us to be in our world or in other people's world where there's a centering of ourselves in the kind of the narrative of our own lives and saying we are the key player rather than that God is the One who ultimately ordains our days and works. Could we talk a little bit about what are some of the things that we can lose in our own lives, our own spirits, when we are consistently bound up in a sense of busyness? Whether that be a constantly almost chronically busy schedule that we really don't step back from to make adjustments to, or whether that be a perpetually busy mind and spirit that just is always on the go and is on the treadmill and won't stop. What are some things that maybe we miss, spiritually speaking, relationally speaking, whatever the category might be? What does busyness kind of squeeze out of our lives and hearts?

Yeah, I think we see it really clearly with Mary and Martha, right? Martha was about doing all the things and serving in all these beautiful ways, and she missed the one thing that was most important, and that was being present with the Lord. And I would just extend that to other people, right? When I am so busy doing other things, or I am busy when I'm tasking, I think it's just really easy to miss the people around me. It's really easy not to be present. So it's costly to the people that God has in my life that I'm supposed to be relating to. It's costly to my relationship to the Lord because he sometimes exists in the margins. I'm in the act of doing, but I'm not in the act of speaking to him about saying, help me, being dependent upon him, inviting him into those spaces, spending time with him, even in my experience of being busy. So I just feel like there's a cost to us, but I think to our relationships with others and the Lord that it's really, yeah, that busyness just seems to uniquely impact.

And sadly, I feel like I've seen the costs being mostly felt by those who are closest to the person who's busy. Oftentimes, or there are times where sometimes the people who get the best of us are out there and it's the ones who are at home that can get the distracted glances and, yeah, seeing us on our phones a lot, preoccupied or whatnot. And so certainly in my counseling experience, there's been a lot of processing that dynamic where sometimes it's those who are closest to us who end up paying that cost. Not always, but certainly there are moments where that's true.

I remember when I was working for a large organization and just discussing some of the demands that both myself and some of my colleagues felt and one of the dangers that we both communicated, we both had small kids at the time. And we said, you know, we just don't want our institutions to be built on the backs of our eight-year-olds because of the time and the energy demands that are there that we ourselves could just give ourselves to and throw ourselves into sometimes with the feeling of, well, this is such a great cause or this is such an important ministry or there's these requirements and demands that I feel like are being made and I just feel like I have to engage in those and stay constantly on and the realization that, as you said, Esther, I could even be present with my family and not be present, where I'm physically present, but emotionally present, I'm physically present, but I'm emotionally gone and distracted and just somewhere else. And I remember a football coach actually who had this statement I've never forgotten, I just heard it a few years ago, but he said one of his principles is be where your feet are. And I've so appreciated that saying and it's helped me often to think, Gunner, be where your feet are and seek to do your best to be present, and believe and trust that God is present with you at all times and is helping you do that and wants you to focus on what's before you, even if you do have a glancing of the eye toward the future and plans and strategies and those things. But seek to be where you are because now is what you have. This moment is what God has given you. And don't try to play God by living in past, present, and future all at once. Only he can see things in that way and experience things in that way.

Yeah, what are some ways that you've seen the Lord be able to cultivate that in your life over time, would you say Gunner? I think most people take a long time to arrive there, and then they know that's how they're supposed to be living, but they don't know how to do that, practically speaking. Yeah, what wisdom would you offer them?

Yeah, well, whatever I could offer is definitely hard earned and kind of maybe more in the form of scars than anything else, but, and I mean, self-inflicted things mostly, but I would say some ways God has really helped me has been just the realization that I can't be in two places at once, even when I try to be in a second place mentally than where I'm at and to really seek to be grounded where I am and to be focused on where I am. I think that the realization of I'm not actually doing the future any good and I'm not improving the future by worrying about it or by continually being caught up in it. And so I think that's been really key. I think being outside has been really helpful, going for walks and allowing myself to think through things but translate those things into prayer really helps me sometimes return to my family or return to the place where I need to be present and really being there. I think that has been significant for me as well. Another way has been journaling where as I actually write out the things I'm thinking about and wondering about, and I form those into prayers and I seek to speak to the Lord in a slow way in that fashion, it helps take those things into my mind, take those things out of my mind and give them some order and give them some articulation and bring them before the Lord. And then sometimes I can simply walk away in a much more peaceful place. And I think that's been significant. 

The other thing I will say that really helped me, Darby, was a long sabbatical back in 2021 that I was graciously granted by the elders of our church, really 2021 into 2022. And I would say that for a long time, I believed theologically that Christ was Lord of our church and he was the head of the church, he was the Shepherd of the church, he was the Chief Shepherd of the church, I was an under-shepherd. I could say all the things and I knew all the things that were true in the major categories. But when I was faced with the opportunity and the gift of stepping away for that amount of time, I really wrestled with feeling like I was leaving our church in the trenches and I was headed for the beach. And I realized how much I really felt like the health of our church, the growth of our church, the care of our church, the protection of our church really was dependent on me and me being there. And it was so good to step away and slowly have my fingers released and to see all the people who stepped up and stepped in and helped out, and most of all, just continued the good work they were already doing that I maybe wasn't realizing or focused on because I was focused on how I needed to make sure this thing kept sailing ahead in the safest way. So that was really significant for me to learn to value the church, to value community, to value the contributions of others in a way that helped me, I think, to not feel like I need to mentally be all these places that I cared about, but instead allow the Lord to care for those people in those places and for me to be able to step away, whether on a sabbatical or for a weekend or when I left the office at 5:00. So I would say that sabbatical was hugely instrumental for me to learn about what some of my heart was longing for and needing in that hyper-busyness and what the Lord was actually doing in the midst of it.

I just wanted to make a brief comment in response to you Gunner, where I'm touched because I feel like so many times, especially when busyness is at its worst, it's easy to go into autopilot mode where I'm not necessarily thinking thoughtfully about anything. I'm not really taking time to take a step back to reflect or to pray or to journal or to consider, is this really on me or where is God in all of this? Because it's just onto the next thing, onto the next thing, and just that frenetic energy that can so often accompany busyness. And so it makes so much sense that so much of what has been helpful to you in navigating busyness is some of the things that busyness itself will tempt us to neglect and do away with. And so that just stuck out to me as something that I need to be aware of is, are my responsibilities and obligations and my desire to check things off the to-do list actually taking away from honest, deep conversations with the Lord? Where is he in this? And who am I in this? Who is he in this? Who does he promise to be in this? Who am I called to be? Also, who is God not calling me or expecting me to be? But all of that takes so much intentionality that sometimes I can get caught up in the current of busyness that all those conversations and those prayers and those times of reflection and clarity and prioritizing these things that take intentionality get so lost so easily. And I feel like I'm just starting to learn again how to protect and carve out those spaces where those honest intentional times can happen with the Lord. But yeah, just wanted to say thank you for your own sharing that reminds me and reaffirms some of those things that I've found to be important in my own journey through busyness.

Thanks, Esther. 

Yeah, I think what's so sweet about what you were saying is, and I learned this on a maternity leave when I was counseling, I was worried about my counselees, I was going to be gone for three months and none them wanted to see anybody else. And when I came back, they were all doing so much better, right? Even in the seasons that I had counseled them. But it wasn't humbling as much as it was that the Lord cares about his people and his kingdom. And it's just so freeing to know the things that we value, that we feel like we need to jump in and do on behalf of him, he's going to accomplish. And so like when you were just talking about the story of your church, the way that it survived and maybe even thrived in your absence and the way people served, is because the Lord loves his people. He loves his church. He loves your family. He is after our good. He doesn't need us to do those things because he is pursuing his people all the time. So sometimes the ability for us to slow down, we actually get to watch God at work or God raise up other people to do wonderful things. And we can't see that when we're busy, but when we slow down we really are just given the opportunity to see what the Lord is doing. And I think that's just an aspect of rest. We look at that in Genesis when the Lord looks over his creation and said, you know, it's very good, and he rested. And I've just come to understand that meaning that he is delighting in what he has done. And so often in busyness, we miss that, the ability to delight in what he's doing. And it just gives my heart great confidence to slow down knowing that his pursuit is constant, so mine does not have to be.

I think there's a wonderful place to end, not with a great lesson about our dispensability or how limited we are, but rather on God's unlimited nature and how good he is, how faithful, how comprehensively present and active he is on our behalf, and in that we can rest. So thank you guys so much for the conversation; I really enjoyed it and I'm taking a lot away from it. Thank you for those of you listening and thank you for joining us again on Where Life and Scripture Meet. Until next time.