Hurry Up?

from One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp (excerpts from pp.66-71)

"The time, always the time, I'm an amateur trying to beat time.  The six kids rouse. We race.... The breakfast... and hurry. The books, the binders ... and hurry!  In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear.  I have done it.  I do it still. Hands of the clock whip hard. So I push hard and I bark hard and I fall hard and when their wide eyes brim sadness and their chins tremble weak, I am weary and I am the thin clear skin, reflecting their fatigue, about to burst, my eyes glistening their same sheer pain.
The hurry makes us hurt.
Hurry always empties a soul.
In the bleep and blink of the twenty-first century, with its "live in the moment" buzz phrase that none of the whirl-weary seem to know how to do, who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync?
Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time: when I fully enter... into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of all my attention.... And when I'm always looking for the next glimpse of glory, I slow and enter....
And blind eyes see: It's this sleuthing for the glory that slows life gloriously.... Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with weight of full attention....
This is where God is.
In the present. I AM - His very name.... God Himself is timeless. It's not the gifts that fulfill, but the holiness of the space.  The God in it.... This I need to consecrate: time....
I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty... that lurks in every moment."

I'm planning a full review of this book soon, but I couldn't wait to share this. What do you have time for today?  My heart ached when I read the description of the author's chronic rushing of her little ones, because I'm guilty of it too.  I'm so thankful to read her words and see how God lead her to treasure ordinary moments and fill her time with gratefulness instead of frantic activity.  More thoughts coming on this, for sure!