Just ask the Supremes, you can't hurry love, oh you just have to wait, love don't come easy, it's a game of give and take...you can't hurry love

And I'm also learning that you can't love in a hurry. Ugh. I'm so often in a hurry. Even when I'm home with no where to go. I almost always take the stairs at home two-at-a-time. Why? Who knows. Type A, I guess.

When we were in Uganda, I was spending some time in the guest house kitchen with Winnie (the cook) and Livingston (the manager). Dave was outside wandering the backyard with Joshua (and Joseph was on my hip - par usual). Dave came up to the window over the kitchen sink and said "I'll take a BigMac and large fries" and laughed. Winnie and Livingston looked confused. So we explained to them the concept of a drive-through restaurant. "That's crazy!" quipped Livingston. "You should never be in such a hurry that you don't get out of your car to take a meal! Wow, it is so different in U.S. That is too busy. Too much hurry." We smiled and shrugged our shoulders, agreeing but knowing that we'd likely be doing that sort of thing once our feet hit the ground back in the U.S.

Tonight I put the crescent rolls in the oven and decided to sneak into my bedroom to read until the oven timer went off, rather than go back downstairs to join the family tackle time =-) I grabbed a book about sloooowing down. How ironic. I needed to read this:

"Ruthlessly eliminate hurry, not just slow down a bit, but ruthlessly eliminate hurry. Not just occasionally, but from our lives. Our whole lives....Spiritual growth comes from listening to God and responding to him in ways we might not have planned ahead of time. When there is no extra space in our lives, when we are living a "marginless" life, there are no reserves."

So, God calls us to love, but we can't love in a hurry.

My husband is good at reminding me that by showing me more than by telling me this. For example, tonight about 30 minutes before the girls' bedtime he decided they should make cookies. He's going out of town tomorrow for another ministry trip. This time just a quick 3-day jaunt to L.A., but he'll miss Valentine's Day. So, being the awesome daddy he is - he figured they should make a treat tonight. Me - the ever practical (boring) one - thought "but it's almost bedtime, and that's too much sugar, and I want to be done parenting for the day, and, and, and... But thankfully I kept my mouth shut for once. Cuz I remembered that love isn't always on a schedule =-)