The Power Of Standing Still

The Power of Standing Still

All my life, I’ve wanted to move. I rode my childhood hobbyhorse to death in record time, springs worn and sprung from mile after imagined, stationary mile. I was the green-eyed girl who was ready to go. Even now I jiggle my foot or leg when my wait exceeds my wish to be in motion.

Lately, though, I’m learning the power of standing still.

Some of the things I once could do with ease—climbing, running, lifting, leaping—are not so easy now. Never really graceful in motion, I’m even less so now. So I surrender grudgingly to stillness and curse my weakness.

What’s more, the stillness goes deeper than muscle and bone. By this age, I’m expected to hold my tongue and not let words fly fast and loose. To tell myself, Hush now—be still, when I know just the phrase I wish to hurl and where I’d like to aim it. I’m asked to hold my ground and not be swayed by whims or fads, or pushed beyond propriety or kindness. Sometimes I am able; sometimes I am not. But I have the power within me to be still. At my core there lies a fixed and steady center, even when I flail about and fall.

A piece of sad news yesterday held a snippet of a poem I’d long forgotten: Robert Frost’s lovely “The Master Speed.” He wrote it for his daughter’s wedding day, and its most-oft quoted lines are the final ones: “That life is only life forever more / Together wing to wing and oar to oar.”

Those are strong lines full of sweeping motion, but the ones that haunt my mind today are these:

And you were given this swiftness, not for haste

Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,

But in the rush of everything to waste

That you may have the power of standing still.

Father who knit my cells together and keeps my heart in metronome-steady time, let me grow to love the power, the glorious power, of standing still and resting quietly in you.

Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the LORD rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The LORD himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.

Exodus 14:13-14