Pace Yourself....

I had hip surgery a couple of weeks ago and it gave me a lot of extra time to think.  The first week the thinking was a little bit blurred by the pain meds but after that I actually got constructive thinking done.  Those who know me best, or at all, know that I'm sort of an all or nothing kind of girl.  I've never been very good at pacing myself.  I want everything I want and I want it now. Throughout the recovery process, I had to learn more about pacing myself.  Getting up for the first time after surgery my immediate reflex was to use both of my legs to gain balance, of course this was a horrible idea and I fell back to the bed that I just gotten up from. Over the next few days, I had to take small steps to adding weight back onto my injured leg.  There was only so much I could do in a day.  In other words I had to pace myself.  It was a frustrating process.  Luckily, my time on crutches was very short, but I am still in the process of recovery and learning more about pacing myself.  The day after I got off crutches, I felt all sorts of home free so I pushed to do all the walking that I could.  By the end of the day I felt the stupidity of all of the extra walking.  There was and is still work to do and it's actually harder work since I know longer have the crutches which were a very tangible reminder of my limitations. 

Now to what I learned.  I realized through this process that life also about pacing yourself. We've all heard the phrase "life is a marathon, not a sprint".  I think sometimes we get so caught up in the what's next that we lose the what is happening now.  I remember going up and thinking about my future.  Anytime I had to make some sort of expectation for the future it was in the form of a checklist.  I'm going to do this and this and this and this.  Now that I'm considered a partial grown-up (as confirmed by my 4-year-old niece this week) I realized that life is more about moments than about the checklist items.  Don't get me wrong, checklist items are important.  We need direction and we need goals.  We can't just sit around and let life happen to us. It's when those checklist items don't work out the way we want we panic and start running through life trying to accomplish those items on our checklist.  When we outpace ourselves trying to accomplish something that either isn't supposed to happen at this time or isn't supposed to happen for us at all, we lose sight of things that Heavenly Father has in store for us.  Trying to force our life in a certain direction will cause ourselves to feel spiritually, emotionally, and yes even physically exhausted.  Our Father in Heaven, who knows us perfectly, has given us a plan. That plan includes a pace (also called timing) at which certain events will unfold.  Our Father in Heaven is the ultimate pacer.  Through scripture study, prayer, and patriarchal blessing we can learn a little bit about his pace for our life.  There is little need for us to outpace ourselves when we, through a little diligent effort, can get the next portion of the map. 

Heavenly Father won't give us all of the map at once, otherwise there would be no need for faith or agency in our lives.  He will give us pieces of the map at time and allow us to keep moving forward until we seek further guidance from Him. It's our responsibility to keep our lives in such a way that our Father in Heaven, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, can be in constant communication with us.  It is also our responsibility to recognize when we are running faster than we are able. If you are in a situation where you feel like you are chasing down some kind of checklist item in your life, it might be time to re-examine whether that checklist item is unnecessary or if the timing just isn't right for that checklist item.

Who says you can't learn anything during recovery??