We are told we can have it all, but economics and the soul agree: everything has a price. When the holidays feel like a placeholder and work becomes a hiding place, the hardest thing to do is simply close your eyes.
Traditions are falling away like dry needles. I didn’t watch Charlie Brown, didn’t catch a minute of Rudolph, and skipped listening to the hilarious Jack Benny Christmas radio specials. We made it to the Christmas Eve service just in time, but I stood there feeling messed up—unshaven, anxious, broken, and wearing clean clothes that somehow felt as tattered as my spirit.
I sang the beloved Christmas carols with as much joy as I could muster, but by the end of the service, part of me wondered if the coldness in my heart would extinguish the flame on my silent night candle. That night and the Christmas Day that followed were uncharacteristically quiet and low-key due to the absence of my grandsons, who were both battling the flu. We had a nice lunch with my younger son and his wife and my wife’s brother, but it didn’t feel like Christmas. It felt like a placeholder for Christmas.
The Unseen Kitchen
In the vacuum of that quiet, I did what I always do when I’m restless: I went to work.
I’ve spent the last two weeks working ten or twelve hours a day on my website. Almost all of that time was focused on what is called the “user experience.” If it were a restaurant, it would be the cleanliness of the dining room, the variety on the menu, and the look and taste of the food. That is the customer experience. But building a website involves all the behind-the-scenes work, too. It is the equivalent of everything that goes on in a restaurant’s kitchen—things not seen by the customer while they’re happening, but things that become painfully obvious if they aren’t done right.
That unseen work in the kitchen requires making complicated choices that are critical to being visible to Google and the other search engines. The back end is a steep mountain and the front end is a marathon. My legs feel heavy, like I’m wading through waist-deep water to get down the hallway—a physical ghost from my thirty years of teaching day and night.
Truthfully, I feel like a runner struggling to sprint through a marathon in which I am the only contestant. If I eventually cross the finish line—having a fully working and professional website—I win; yet, I still run as if starving junkyard dogs are snapping at my heels. It’s a frantic pace for a race with no silver medalists.
Opportunity Cost
I wrote what would become my first published story in college. It was titled Opportunity Cost, named after an important concept in economics I had just learned. The essay began with a quote from a beer commercial that asked, “Who says you can’t have it all?” It’s a slick line for a salesman, but the notion is an utter lie for human beings. Economics says that to get something, you have to give something else up.
I’m giving up the rest I need in order to leap across some mythical finish line, as if there is such a thing in life. Most of the things we think are finish lines are just checkpoints, one after the other.
I can burn the candle at both ends and the middle, fueled by enough French Roast to jumpstart a dead battery. I can feel productive right up until the moment my eyes won’t stay open. But the truth is, my “productivity” is often just a loud way of ignoring the quiet whisper of the Spirit telling me to close my eyes and allow myself to sleep for an hour.
Toiling in Vain
But one thing about me: in the moment, I always think that I know best. Which is probably the best proof of my fatigue and fog. A person controlled by the Holy Spirit would recognize the futility of trying to run ahead of God, only to discover some “Red Sea” obstacle in the way.
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves. (Psalm 127:1-2)
I firmly believe in the God of the Bible and the truth of His word, but walking through the chest-high weeds of life, I tend to forget that in practice. I’ve written about being tired before, and I reckon I’ll have to write about it again. Because if the fellow telling you to trust God with his work can’t remember to trust Him with his sleep, he hasn’t learned much in sixty-six years.
He just needs to go back to school. And I have to believe it’s going to be a standing room only class. So, if you get there before me, save me a seat, huh?
