The Gods of Achievement Don't Love You

Things to remember when you're forced to rest & heal

I stand with my big belly pressed against the glass, watching the rain pool on our patio table and the maple buds unfurl their tiny fists to catch the droplets.

I have spent the day lazing, moving from the couch to our bed and back to the couch again. I have stroked Pablo’s fur and noticed the way he releases his entire weight against me as he curls wherever I curl, his hazel eyes at peace because we’re warm together.

Yesterday was much the same. I’m recovering from something, and my body and my mind refuse to move any faster than this. I think some thoughts, I eat some toast, I feel sick again, I sleep.

There’s a piece of me that wants to enjoy this. That wants to relish the forced slowness, the rhythmic lullaby of rain on the porch and the gray skies that tell my body it’s okay to nestle, to rest, to heal. But a larger piece of me swims around in an angsty fog. I watch the kitchen clock turn the hours over. Morning melts into afternoon, and afternoon becomes evening, and soon another day will have gone by in which I have not tended to the dishes or drawn nearer to my dreams. My inner voice hisses, “Wasted. Lazy. Nothing to show.”

I sit at the kitchen table and watch the birds, who fluff their feathers at the feeder. I open my Bible and graze the words in Isaiah, because it’s the place where the binding happens to naturally render itself.

“For just as rain and snow fall from heaven

and do not return there

without saturating the earth

and making it germinate and sprout,

and providing seed to sow

and food to eat…”

I look up at the rain. I watch it saturate the earth, and see that my flowers are germinating and the grass is sprouting and the strawberry plants already look as though they could bear fruit, and I see that it is it true. I keep reading.

“…so my word that comes from my mouth

will not return to me empty,

but it will accomplish what I please

and will prosper in what I send it to do” (Isaiah 55: 10-11).

I think of what words might be coming from God’s mouth today, what he is accomplishing here in this sluggish body and brain of mine that seem to have no regard for what I want. I feel uncomfortable in my skin and mind. I wish I could crawl out of them, into a body that feels fresher, newer, better.

Into my mind comes the phrase ‘gods of achievement.’ And then, as though that it has unlocked some sort of floodgate, I have a new stream of consciousness that flows within me as freely as the rain pours from the sky outside. I struggle to keep up with it; to jot it all down:

The thing about trying to appease the gods of achievement is that they are not for you—you are only ever for them. They neither feel, nor love. They are not alive, and yet—how easy it is to bow before them. To think that the sacrifices of staying up late and rising early, of leaving soul and body and mind untended, of grinding and pushing to the point of exhaustion—that those sacrifices will be rewarded with the satisfaction of whatever it is we’re hungry for.

I think with suddenly clarity and sadness of the newborn moments, when I wished my children wouldn’t need me so much so that I could get more important things done. Of the times I pushed off engagements with friends so that I could work, and then work some more. Of the joys and delights that I have utterly neglected, because they aren’t useful: The books unread. The meals uncooked. The strolls unwalked. And of the times, day after day after day, that I’ve told God I’ll come see him, just as soon as I finish ‘this one thing.’

I need a whole new way of operating, I realize.

Because bowing to the gods of achievement rids me of joy. It robs me of the ability to delight in creation as a verb, because I believe I have to wrestle it into a product. The process of working and creating can no longer be about communing with my Father when it’s been warped into the worship of achievement.

Achievement is a harsh task-master because it cares nothing for us. And yet. I lament when God pulls me away from it. I kick and scream against his rest and healing. It’s as though he’s dragging me to achievement rehab and I—I must be forced, not at all certain that I want to give up my addiction even though I know it’s destroying me.

My fingers touch the pages of Isaiah again:

“Why do you spend silver on what is not food,

and your wages on what does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

and you will enjoy the choicest of foods.

Pay attention and come to me;

listen, so that you will live” (Isaiah 55: 1-3).

The Israelites worshipped other gods and walked away from their Father, his hands outstretched with love and provision and satisfaction. Am I all that different? No. Isaiah could just as well be speaking to me here today.

This word—God’s word—it’s still accomplishing what he pleases, like the rain on this wet weekday in Maine, nearly 3,000 years after he spoke it aloud. It’s telling me to turn around. To turn my eyes away from the punishing gods of achievement, who are neither alive nor care anything for me, and to settle—yes, settle!—before my Father, who will whisper secrets this world has never heard and fill me on foods this world has never eaten. And then, then, I will live.

“Teach me how,” I whisper in the deep.