Busyness

 

I read about a very successful preacher, or so he and many others believed, but he was always busy, busy, busy.

In fact he was so busy with his work "for God" that he neglected the most important things in his life.

Late one November his wife caught him as he was racing out the door to go to preach to somebody else's kids. She asked, "Do you know, or do you even care that from the middle of September until today, you have not been home one night?"

She had a breakdown soon after. He contemplated suicide. He later confessed, "I was a man who existed in a shell."

Like many of us, his shell of busyness was his external protection--not from the outside world--but from his inner world of unresolved anxiety. His problem was that he was a busy-aholic.

As long as we keep on the run to avoid facing our inner anxieties, our busyness can get us addicted to our own adrenaline, which becomes nothing less than a cheap anesthetic to deaden the feelings of an empty or troubled life. In so doing we end up hiding from our own reality--a self-destructive path to follow.

To overcome, the first step is to admit the truth of what we are doing; that is, admit our addiction no matter how refined it appears to be. The second step is to get into a recovery/ support group to help stop the addictive/ avoidance behavior so we can feel the pain we are seeking to avoid. And third, where necessary we need to seek wise or professional counseling as well as God's help to resolve and overcome the cause or causes behind our avoidance behavior.

Dear God,
Please help me
to let go of the addictive over-control of my life,
find the help I need to overcome,

Thank you for hearing and answering my
prayer.