It was a young volunteer that asked the question, after the rush of people had died down and we had a moment to sit quietly at the food bank.
She held up a nearby clipboard, pretending to write on it.
"Jennie, do I look busy?"
She was just playing, probably mimicking actions she's seen from from adults. She had no idea she had just vocalized a question I'm constantly asking myself.
Being this busy is a somewhat new thing to me since moving here, and that's part of why I cling to it so much. In the months before I moved, I was without a job and bored out of my mind in an unhealthy way. For this reason, I sometimes equate the busyness I now experience with the overall healthy mental state I feel like I'm in, and I know that this association could potentially lead to problems if I'm not careful. But it's more than just my own mind that tries to tell me that busy is good.
I had lots of opportunities back home to do Sunday school classes and Bible studies with women just a few years older than me, and I always found it a bit backwards how much time was spent talking about how to fit God into our busy lives. I never understood how it has become such an admirable thing to be so busy with our own lives that even God is just another commitment that we scramble to fit in somewhere.
When I think of the women in my own family, I think of busyness. There's always something to be done, usually something selfless and helpful to others. One of my favorite pictures is of me as a young child, laying on the floor surrounded by my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother. When I first discovered this picture, the thing that struck me the most about it was that it showed four generations of women in my family all sitting down at one time. But it also serves as a reminder that no matter how busy the women in my family were, they were never to busy to love people, including me. There have been a few moments over the past months when I've been able to see a glimpse of them within myself, and I can't think of many things at all that make me prouder than that.
As I sit here trying to finish writing this post, my mind keeps wandering to the last minute things I need to do for the day camp I'm leading starting tomorrow. I want it to be a success, and I've tried my best to make sure that it will be. But what if my best isn't good enough?
That question is often the driving force of my busyness, and I wonder if the women of the generations before me ever asked themselves the same thing. What I do know is that their busyness came from, and still does come from a place of love and a willingness to serve others, not a desire for self promotion or worldly recognition.
I think it's going to take me a long time to figure out how busy is the right amount for me, but I hope that I will always remember the women who taught me what it means to be busy for the right reasons.
