Wake up and go to the bathroom. Let the dog out and make the coffee and have quiet time. Try not to get distracted by the phone or how tired you still feel, then notice the time and jump up to make breakfast and throw lunch together for your son and drop him off early at school for practice.

Head to the gym for a quick workout and come home and shower and feed the dog because you forgot to before you left for school. Sit down to work and try not to feel overwhelmed at the length of your to-do list, and the number of new emails, and the exclamation points on some marking them urgent with IMPORTANT in all caps in the subject line. Notice you have a Zoom meeting soon that you thought was tomorrow while fielding texts from your daughter about her spring break trip and your husband asking about the plumber and a reminder from the doctor about your upcoming appointment and reply C to confirm.

Make lunch and let the dog out again and run the dishwasher and throw wet clothes into the dryer. Get back to your desk to finish the things on the list you hadn’t gotten to yet but notice more emails, more items for the to-do list, more texts from your son about how he lost his practice jersey and 11 unread messages from the group chat you muted (thank goodness) which were mostly heart reactions to someones comment from earlier in the day.

Greet your son when he walks in from the bus and chuckle while he recounts his day and eats a bucket-sized bowl of Lucky Charms. Drive him to training, come home and fix dinner, clean up dinner, notice you’re low on iced tea so boil some water to make more. Spray down the counters and run the vacuum around the stools since your son leaves crumbs everywhere. Close down the kitchen for the night, wash your face and put on pajamas and finally plop down on the couch with your book.

But you’re too tired to read, too frazzled to focus, and your coffee and quiet time feel like they were a hundred years ago. What even did I read this morning? What was my conversation with Jesus even about?

You’re frustrated with yourself because you’re here again–in this endless cycle of busy and doing, which is so important and necessary (also the work is mysterious and important, #iykyk). But you’ve forgotten once again how to rely on God and His grace and His strength for the day. Instead of bringing Him into all of the doing, you’ve found you’ve compartmentalized Him again, checked the box of quiet time again, left Him on the couch when you closed your Bible again, and didn’t invite any of Him to linger over you as you carried out your day.

So the message I would write in a thousand bottles and fling into all of the seas is the one I need a thousand times over, day after day:

Be still and know.

HE is God, not you.

He is GOD, creator of the sun and the stars and the winds and the trees.

And if He can create the entirety of the world with a word in just seven days,

He can carry you through every single one of yours, with kindness and light and grace and love.

Be. Still.