Me, Myself, and Efficiency

It's hard for me to sit still and do literally nothing. It's not in me, though John has tried to instill it. I always have to be "getting something done" on my never-ending to-do list. I don't follow the familiar maxim, "Stop and smell the roses." I want to, but I don't have time at that moment; instead, I add it to my list of things to do: Next week - Stop and smell the roses.

My personality, psyche, whatever you want to call it is driven by efficiency and duty. My life is built on a foundation of "shoulds."

I should start dinner.
I should vacuum.
I should give the dog a bath.
I should exercise.
I should stop spending so much money on scrapbooking supplies.
I should do a better job of showing my husband I love him.
I should spend less time on Facebook.
I should write a post for my blog.

And the list goes on. I swim in an ocean of duty with waves of shoulds crashing over me. It is suffocating and overwhelming, living with constant guilt about the shoulds - even valid, good shoulds - that don't get crossed off the list.

In the recent September 22, 2007 issue of World magazine, Andree Seu wrote a column called "The Uselessness of Delight." Its theme struck a chord with me:

Delight is the most useless of things. It doesn't get the house clean or the bills paid. Useless - like flowers. Like rainbows. Like Beethoven's Ninth.... Delight covers a multitude of ... shortcomings.... [It] cannot be hidden. It finds an excuse to ooze all over the place. It seeks a getaway vacation with the beloved when it's not convenient. It asks different questions than duty. Duty says, "I should." Delight says, "I want to." Duty is efficient. Delight tends to be anything but.

What is less efficient than the story of mankind? If it were about efficiency, God would have wiped the plate clean and commenced with more promising subjects.

Ay, there's the rub. I hold up efficiency as an idol, but what if God were as efficient as I (pathetically) strive to be?

Where I would have endorsed tabula rasa, God shucked efficiency and turned to grace instead. I try to be a good imitator of Christ as Scripture urges, but leaning on my own understanding of the task has resulted in a works-based duty that has edged out delight - and grace and love and humility, and all the things God is trying to teach me.

Seu is right. Delight isn't efficient; it can be time-consuming and get in the way. Isn't it sad that I tend to avoid delight because then I can't cross items off my self-important list of things to do.

But delight is important to God. He delights in us (Ps. 147:11, 149:4) . He sees great worth in delight, and also instructs us to delight in Him and His word (Ps. 37:4, 112:1). Delight isn't a waste of time or an interruption of efficiency. It is knowing God deeply and living an abundant life, abundant not because we have everything we want but because we have Him.

This doesn't mean I need to toss my to-do list and throw caution to the wind and stop to smell the roses right when I'm late for an appointment, of course. But I do need to allow what Richard Swenson calls margin into my life so that delight has the opportunity to, well, delight me. Take the time to be still, delighting myself in the Lord so that a stop to smell the roses doesn't conjure up thoughts of inefficiency, but instead refocuses my thoughts on the great God who made the roses.