“Son, if you don’t slow down you are going to wear yourself out!” exclaimed Mama. I can still hear Mama’s voice ringing in my ear. And she was right. After the last two weeks I feel worn out from a crazy busy work and graduate school schedule with 3:30 am wake ups, 4-5 am work starts, traveling, working 13 days straight, and fitting in graduate school classes three nights a week. Now, I’ve always been the type of person to be on the go from morning to night. I’m an extreme extrovert and love being around people and being active. Sitting still is not something I’ve been too familiar with over my lifetime. However, as Mama also said before, “If you don’t slow down, one day your body is going to make you slow down whether you want to or not.” And that’s the honest to god’s truth too, as Mama used to say. That’s what happened over the past two weeks.
My body was giving me signals to sit my butt down and be still. And when I did just that over the past several days, I felt so much better both mentally and physically. Now, surprisingly, last week when I was running all over the place with work and making wrong turns (bad choices) with food (see last week’s blog), I still managed to lose 2 lbs. in my health journey. That was because I noticed my wrong turns and self-corrected mid-week. Flash forward to this week with me listening to Mama and being still more, when I weighed in this morning, I had lost 4 lbs. over the past week for a total of 44 lbs. lost since 12/15/24 (14 weeks)! I’m not sure how much the stress levels and sitting still this week to calm the stress had to do with the weight loss difference, but I do believe it definitely contributed. There are times when we should be moving more and there are times when we should be still. Mama knew it, and now I’m learning to embrace it more too. It is a lifelong lesson that I can trace back to childhood sitting in the Baptist Church pews in my Easter Sunday best clothes, trying to sit still waiting for the Easter egg hunt and candy later to come.
I remember Easter Sundays growing up in Georgia. Mama and my aunts would dress all of us little kids in suits, sometimes complete with dress coat, vest, and tie. Sitting still on the hard wooden Baptist Church pews, in those tight, non-breathable fabrics, sweat trickling down my back, listening to the long sermon that stood between me and the Easter egg hunt and candy outside was beyond challenging. I, like many of my cousins, fidgeted and fussed as our mamas shushed us with stern looks. Y’all know that all it took was one look from a southern mama back then and you knew to hush up and behave quick, fast and in a hurry because they didn’t play. As challenging as it was to be still, once the service was over, we were rewarded with the Easter egg hunt and lots of candy and other treats. It was a rite of Spring and Easter in both the spiritual/religious and secular/nature sense. And years later I learned another lesson about the value and importance of being still and waiting during the Easter/Spring season.
One lesson on being still that I learned as an adult has both religious as well as secular/nature meaning for me. For those readers and friends who are non-religious, please hang with me in the explanation. As a Christian, in adulthood, I recognize and embrace the Lenten Season of the religious calendar year. It wasn’t something we recognized or practiced as Southern Baptists growing up, but I learned more about it as an adult Christian from other faiths. For those not familiar, Lent is the season between Ash Wednesday (the day after Mardi Gras) and Easter Sunday. And the most important period is Holy Week leading from the Last Supper to Jesus’ crucifixion and up to Easter Sunday, which marks Jesus’ resurrection. One Lenten meditation I read years ago talked about the importance of Holy Saturday as a period of being still and waiting. On Holy Saturday, Jesus has been crucified and died on Good Friday, and the next day, Easter Sunday is when we know from the story that he was resurrected from the dead to new life. But we have to be still and go through the waiting period of Holy Saturday to move from the darkness of Good Friday to the joy, light and new life of Easter Sunday.
For me, the secular/nature lens is that this story takes place in the Spring of the year. We have just come through the darkness and cold winter, and we know there’s new life and light in the Spring coming on Easter morning, but to get there we must travel through the “Saturday” periods where we have to be still and wait for the light and new life coming in Spring. I refer to these moments in life as my “Holy Saturday” moments. Sometimes in life we need to act and move to make progress. And sometimes, we have “Holy Saturday” or if you prefer just “Saturday” moments where the best thing we can do is be still, knowing that new life and light are coming in the morning.
I’ve experienced this many times in life. When hunting with Daddy as a kid, I learned the importance of being still and patient waiting for the wild game we hunted to come within site. And yes, we always ate what we hunted. Later in life, I learned when to move and act in career/job decisions and when to be still to observe, reflect, and wait patiently for the new things to come in the morning. And yes, sometimes we need to be still to allow our physical bodies, minds, and spirits to rest, regroup, renew, and refresh, all while knowing that the new light and life are coming in the morning for whatever we are seeking.
There’s also perseverance or grit in the waiting and being still. I’m reminded of this from a local Washington D.C. area story about the mighty little Cherry Tree by the Tidal Basin, nicknamed Stumpy. This tiny tree is barely a stump holding on persevering through tidal floods of brackish water, failing sea walls, and receding soil. And yet, the tiny Cherry Tree known as Stumpy gives it all it can during Spring Cherry Blossom time to bloom as big and bold as possible. Stumpy waits, stands still in spite of all the challenges, and when it is time to move and bloom, Stumpy puts on the best show (see the photo below, credited to my friend Rit Lon). Stumpy sadly will have to be cut down to make way for the seawall repairs, but Stumpy will live on through propagation into new Cherry Trees that will be planted and bloom along the Tidal Basin for decades to come. Stumpy knows the value of when to stand still, and when to move and blossom and let its colors flourish. More on Stumpy and the topic of perseverance in future blog posts.
Meantime, going back to Mama’s comments to me, yes, I’ve learned to listen to her words and embrace the importance and value of being still. As always, I ask each of you to reflect on your stories and when you recognized and experienced the “Saturday” moments where you needed to simply be still and wait. What did that feel like for you? Was it difficult? Can you look back now and see the value and benefits you realized by being still? As we enter into Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, I encourage each of you to think about the power of being still in your personal and professional lives, and the benefits it brings to you as you wait patiently for the new life, light, and joy coming in the Spring morning.
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