During a New Year’s Even Zoom “party,” I was asked to share my New Year’s resolutions. I did have a few ideas, but nothing that I could really articulate at the time, so I passed.
My “resolutions” were inspired by Danielle Bean and the three tips she offered in her session entitled “Finding Rest in Prayer” in the Pray More Advent Retreat. Bean, an author, speaker, and Catholic mother of eight, is a woman I have admired since I was introduced to her first book, My Cup of Tea: Musings of a Catholic Mom, back in 2005 when my children – and hers – were very young. She is a faithful woman and a talented writer, but most of all she is real. Danielle “gets it.” She gets life in its beauty, its messiness, and its busyness. She shares her stories and insights with the voice of a girlfriend – joking one minute and wisely articulating life’s great truths, in the next.
In her retreat session, Danielle reminded listeners that “prayer is for us.” She described a particularly busy day she was about to face and how she was tempted to skip or rush through her morning prayer. Instead, she deliberately spent some quality time with the Lord, only to later discover a few emails which changed her plans and cleared her morning schedule.
Bean laughed and acknowledged that this type of thing certainly doesn’t happen very often, but it was a very good reminder that when our priorities are aligned, God will not let us down. “If we are generous with our time with the Lord,” she said, “He's going to help us see how to make all those other things fall into place.”
Danielle reminded us that prayer does not have to be showy. God does not need us to impress him. Furthermore, he does not need our prayers; we do! Prayer is time spent with our Lord. He merely wants us to show up and, for this reason, we cannot regard prayer as another thing on our busy checklists. “[Prayer]’s not a chore. It's something that's for you, and you truly can find rest in it ... You don't have to do anything. You don't have to say anything to sit in his presence, place yourself in his presence, and allow yourself to be there.”
Speaking about finding rest led Bean to talk about the pandemic and how cancelled plans for 2020 enabled many people to reset and re-prioritize. She suggested that we re-evaluate our activities, as they resume, to see if they are still worth being on our calendars and on our bank statements. Bean discouraged us from wearing busyness as a badge of honour: “Decide to cut some things out. Make that scary decision to not do the thing, to be less busy, to recognize busyness in itself is not a virtue.”
Danielle Bean’s final point resonated with me the most. She stated that the ability to multi-task is a myth. We are all juggling many things in our lives, but we need to allow ourselves to really focus on a single thing at a given time in order to do that thing well.
She gave the example of one of her children calling out to her while she was busy and looking at her phone. Bean assured her daughter that she was listening, but her daughter insisted that she wanted her “’to listen with [her] eyes.’”
This request was an awakening. I know that I, too, have been guilty of not being truly present to people and to tasks. I need to work on this and “give [my]self permission to do one thing at a time.”
I know Danielle’s aim was to help people during the Advent season, but she has inspired my New Year’s resolution to find rest in God. I resolve: to pray because I need to, not because I “have” to; to discern and prioritize the activities I resume after the pandemic; and to give proper attention to each task and each person in my life, rather than letting too many thoughts water down my focus and my effectiveness.
I did have a few goals, but I needed a bit more time than a Zoom conversation offered to explain that “finding rest” really can be a New Year’s resolution.