To-Do: Give Up

Today I was looking through my to-do list to see what I have been letting slip through the cracks, and I came across the best to-do item I have ever written. It said, “Give up on sending out Christmas cards?” Considering it is the end of February, I feel like this is an appropriate thing to do, or not do as the case may be.

Talk about the easiest thing to check off a to-do list! And yet, surprisingly I have not yet checked it off. Why? Maybe I still haven’t completely given up the idea of sending some out. I mean, I ordered them, I updated my address list, and I even bought stamps! It would be silly to not send them out, and I feel guilty for not doing it. I mean, what if someone thinks I forgot about them or that I scratched them off my list this year?

Realistically though, most people are not losing sleep over not receiving a Christmas picture from us. Even if the thought occurred to them that it didn’t come this year, at most they thought, “Huh, that’s weird,” and then moved on with their day. What’s the famous quote from Eleanor Roosevelt? “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

Then why am I still having trouble checking off the one thing on my list that requires me to do nothing? Because giving up is hard! It is admitting defeat. It is accepting that a plan I made did not pan out. It is also accepting that my plans are not as important as I thought they were.

Giving up is hard, but when God is calling us to do so, he does so to open space for his plans for us, which are better than anything we could come up with anyway. Giving up is a surrender, a way of remembering that our plans are temporary, while God’s are forever. It is a way of trusting God, rather than ourselves. Or as James puts it,

Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (Jam 4:13–14)

Now that’s a difficult idea to swallow, but one that releases the pressure of believing that our plans can make or break our lives.

My mom is a piano teacher, and although we do not live near her, she is kind enough to teach my kids lessons virtually. Every week, my daughters forget to practice, and every week when I say it’s time for their lesson they grumble and complain. One of them almost always cries. It’s not that their grandmother is harsh or lectures them. Quite the opposite: she is about the most forgiving and sweet person you will ever meet. But it’s also a waste of her time for her “students” to not come prepared for their lesson, and my daughters feel that pressure.

The other day, my mom came up with an idea. She said, “Why don’t we call our time together ‘Piano Practice’ instead of a ‘Piano Lesson?’ That way if the girls didn’t have time to practice, we will use our time together to practice.” When I told my daughters about this idea, I could see a physical weight lifted from their bodies. Their furrowed brows lifted, their eyes brightened, their shoulders relaxed, and they smiled. I could not believe how one word could release so much pressure. There were no tears this week before “Piano Practice.”

We tend to think that expectations will be enough to get things done. Whether it’s reminders on our phone, Post-it notes on the mirror, or more things added to our calendars, we create a succession of little laws for our future selves to fulfill. They might be simple things like “vacuum the downstairs” or more aspirational reminders like “be grateful for today,” but the effect is often the same: a nagging sense of obligation that weighs you down. And the longer the list gets, the more suffocating it can feel.

After the switch to “piano practice,” I noticed their piano books open and their assignments written down with a self-congratulatory sticker. I did not tell them to do that. The release of pressure and the giving up on perfecting things opened a space in which they felt free enough to do the thing they were “supposed” to do in the first place.

As for my Christmas cards, they’re not on the list anymore. Which probably means they’ll be hitting mailboxes next week.