4:13 Podcast: Can I Unhurry My Heart? With Jennifer Dukes Lee [Episode 175 - PART 1]

Jennifer Rothschild: We long to break from the fast pace of life. But if we're honest, we're afraid of what we might miss. But when going big and hustling hard leaves us stressed and empty and out of sorts, maybe this is our cue to step into a far more satisfying and sustainable pace. So today author Jennifer Dukes Lee is going to show you a path to un-hurried living by teaching you the ancient art of growing slow. Sounds good, right? So let's hurry up and unpack how to un-hurry our hearts. All right, K.C.? Give us the intro.

K.C. Wright: Welcome, welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Now, your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, hello. We are so happy you're here with us. You made a good choice today listening to the podcast, and it just makes K.C. and I happier. I'm Jennifer and I'm just here to help you be and do more than you feel capable of as you live the "I Can" life of Philippians 4:13. And, of course, you know him and you love him. That was my seeing eye guy, K.C. Wright.

K.C. Wright: Hey, hey.

Jennifer Rothschild: And it's going to be a good day today because we're going to talk about something that I had never heard of.

K.C. Wright: Uh-huh.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hurry sickness.

K.C. Wright: Yeah, it's a thing.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's a thing. I don't know how I missed it. I must have been in too much of a hurry to learn about it. But, y'all, since this is a thing, I had to Google it. You know, I'm a believer that, "Who needs a brain if you have Google?" so I was Googling it before the podcast. Okay. And so if you don't know what it is, it's a mix of anxiety and these constant feelings of urgency.

K.C. Wright: Oh, boy.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, so we've all had moments of that --

K.C. Wright: Absolutely.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- right?

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: But hurry sickness is when it's perpetual. Okay? It's just constant. And so I was like, "Oh, no. Do I have the symptoms? I better hurry up and find out," so -- of course. So I found six symptoms. I looked on several different sites. But these six tended to be the ones that showed up the most frequently. Okay? So I'm going to tell you what the six symptoms are. Now, don't panic if you start to relate. Don't be a big self-diagnoser and become a fatalist. Okay? Let's just look at this as information that will help prepare us for this conversation. Okay?

K.C. Wright: I like this.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's really informative. Okay? Okay, so here's how you know you've got it. First, you treat everything like a race. Okay. So I have this tendency, whatever it is. Like, if it's on the To-Do list too long, I'm, like, rushing to get it done, even if it's non urgent. I've had to really train myself the difference between urgent and importance. But if you have hurry sickness, you treat everything like a race. Okay, second one. It's really hard for you to do just one task at a time.

K.C. Wright: Oh, boy.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. So one time, K.C., I - like, I'm this way with being efficient with my movement. So I want to carry as many things in my hands at once into the next room, and so -- you shouldn't do that when you're blind. But I remember I was gathering the things to make muffins one time, and I had gotten a measuring cup and hooked it onto my belt loop. I was holding flour and oil, I think, in my hands. And then I had on a jacket, so I was like, well, I need to get the eggs. So I put the eggs in my pocket. Then I get to the other side of the kitchen -- because, like, I have done this so efficiently, right?

K.C. Wright: Eggs in your pocket?

Jennifer Rothschild: I put eggs in my pocket.

K.C. Wright: That's multi-tasking.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, then I bent down to get a pan and forgot the eggs were in my pocket and they all broke. Okay, anyway -- all right, so we get that picture. All right. Third one, you get highly irritated with delays. Like small delays bring out a way too big irritated reaction from you.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Fourth one, you feel perpetually behind schedule, even if you're not.

K.C. Wright: Huh.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's interesting. You have the emotion, the feeling, of being behind. Fifth one, you constantly interrupt people or talk over them or try to finish their sentences, especially if they're a slow talker.

K.C. Wright: Oh.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, mm-hmm.

K.C. Wright: Because you've got something better to say --

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. And you want to hurry it up.

K.C. Wright: -- and they're taking too long.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Right, you want to hurry it up.

K.C. Wright: Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, K.C.

K.C. Wright: I know where this is going. Let me just finish for you.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. Sixth one. This is the last one. You find excessive joy in crossing off things on your To Do list. Okay, that's so rude. Anyway... So those are six symptoms that if you have these on a heightened level for a long period of time, you might have what is called hurry sickness.

K.C. Wright: I'm three out of six.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. So chances are, like, K.C., you identified with a few. K.C. identified with three.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So chances are you identified with a few. But here's what we all can identify with, and it's learning to grow slow. So, K.C., let's introduce Jennifer Dukes Lee.

K.C. Wright: Let me intro Jennifer. Jennifer Dukes Lee lives on the fifth generation Lee Family farm in Iowa, where she and her husband are raising crops, pigs, and two beautiful humans. She writes books, loves queso, and enjoys singing way too loudly to songs with great harmony. Once upon a time, she didn't believe in Jesus. Now he's her CEO. Her latest book is "Growing Slow: Lessons on Un-Hurrying Your Heart from an Accidental Farm Girl." And that is what Jennifer and Jennifer are talking about. Are you ready for this? You're going to love this conversation, I promise you that, between these two amazing Jennifers. Let's listen in.

Jennifer Rothschild: Jennifer, it's really fun to talk to another Jennifer. This is like a dynamite conversation, power packed with two Jennifers.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So here's what I want to start with, though. Okay, the message of your book, super attractive to me, Growing Slow. And I know it was born for you after years of this fast-paced living, and I know it caught up to you in a very dramatic way. So let's start with that. Tell us what happened.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Well, Jennifer, I could have more easily written a book called "Growing Fast." That is my default. I am a high-capacity person, achiever, Enneagram 3. And really since I was a teen, I can see evidence of a life of hurry and hustle, go big or go home, got to do what I can do right now to make an impact on the world. And my goals were not always, but quite often aligned with, I think, God's purpose for my life, but how I got there ended up taking a toll on my body. And I know that God wants us to live lives of meaning and purpose and to do things that make an impact on the world while we're here, but he doesn't want us to wear ourselves out in the process to the point where we are hurting our bodies and our minds and our spirits, where we're hurting the things that matter most, which to me are my faith life and the connections I have with people, including my family and friends. But all of those things were suffering, including my physical health. I ended up in the doctor's office -- a lot of doctor's offices actually -- because I had so many symptoms that were seemingly unrelated: some stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, stomach issues. You name it. Pain, different aches and pains that I couldn't put a finger on. And they did all of the tests, and I so appreciated it, but what I didn't appreciate is they didn't tell me what pill to take to make it go away.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Something out there that was the problem.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Right? It's got to be -- It can't be something inside --

Jennifer Rothschild: No.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: -- it has to be something out there. So I ended up in a functional med doctor sort of as a last resort. And he was this kind of doctor that does a whole audit of your entire self. And he told me -- he didn't use these words, but he really identified hurry sickness, which is an actual trauma to the body. He told me that I was stressed out. I'm like, "I'm not stressed out. I know stressed out people. That can't be me. This is always the way I operate." But it was clear, when I went home and did some research, that I did have this hurry sickness --

Jennifer Rothschild: Interesting.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: -- and I had to take real practical steps to dial it all back. And in that process, I began to look to the land outside of my kitchen window. Because, Jennifer, I'm a farm wife and we sit on 700 acres of land. It's corn and soybeans and pigs. And the land -- God working through seasons of a growing season right here on this Iowa farm, I took my cues from land. Land became my teacher. God, through land became my teacher. And he'd been teaching me lessons all along, but, you know, it was just kind of one of those moments where it all comes together, and it's like, oh, yeah. And so that's when things changed for me, I ended up writing a book about it, and now it's my joy to be on podcasts like yours talking about it.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, it is fascinating to most of us, because we don't live on 700 acres with a barn full of pigs, you know.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: So I would love to hear just a little bit of a picture of what farm life has taught you and what it can teach us about growing slow and living un-hurried.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Well, the farm here is itself a growing slow project. This past year we were named a heritage farm in Iowa, which means we've been around for 150 years. That is a slow-grown way of looking at things. And it's all about sustainability. When we farm, we aren't thinking only about how to put money in our pockets; we're thinking about feeding a world, we're thinking about purpose, and we're thinking about future generations who will farm this land. So we want to take good care of it because we want this land to be productive for future generations of our family and future generations of your family and other families. That's the way it is on a farm. So the farm teaches us a lot about sustainable growth. And I think that in today's day and age, we're more about -- not everybody, but too many people are about viral growth, quick growth, making a name for yourself right now. I'm also an acquisitions editor for a publishing house, in addition to being an author. And so often I get book proposals from authors and literary agents, and my answer back is it's just not ready.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's too soon.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: It's too soon. Just wait. You don't have to get published to be somebody right now. Do the work of making sure that it's the right time to write this book for you. And that's true in ministries, that's true in relationships when you want to jump right in, you fall in love. But you got to do the hard work to make sure the relationship is sustainable, the ministry is sustainable, the business is sustainable, and the farm is sustainable. And as a part of that sustainability, God teaches us a lot about how he works through seasons. So on a farm, we plant in the spring. We put a seed down in a dark, dark place. And if I were a corn seed, I would be freaking out, like, "Why am I down here?" But I've never once seen a corn plant freaking out. It eventually grows. We look out, it can be days or sometimes even weeks before we see corn and soybeans peeking up. And then day after day, the growth is nearly imperceptible. You can't see it if you're just staring at the field all the time. You can only see it by reflecting back and looking at growth over time. And that's true of us too, isn't it --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: -- that we need to take time and look back and see that growth is happening, as slow and imperceptible as it may seem sometimes. But because of that slow growth, because of growing slow fields, plants are putting down deep roots. And I know you may say roots, but I say roots here in Iowa.

Jennifer Rothschild: You do say "roots," yeah. I love it.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: I just had to clarify that. It is the Iowa way. So we put down deep roots in things when we -- into the soil of whatever we're planting in, just like a corn and the soybean plant would do. And then comes harvest. And we all know the beauty and wonder of holding that fully ripened thing in your hand, whether it's corn or a tomato or an idea, or sending a child off to college. Whatever it may be, we go through different harvests in life. And then one fourth of a whole growing season is winter.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Which can be pretty cold and dreary, right?

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Yeah. So I love this cycle that you're describing. But here we are in the middle of winter, and there are some people listening right now who are like, yeah, this is my least favorite. My goal is to endure to get to spring. So what'd you learn about winter when it comes to all this?

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Oh, my goodness. I totally get it. Here we -- I always see memes on Facebook about January, February time, and they'll say, "Why do I live in a place where the air hurts my face?"

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And, like, it gets so icy here that our windows, they get covered with ice. And my neighbor calls it cheap blinds.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, that's funny.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: So as you can imagine, when I wrote those winter chapters of the book, I was like, "Nobody wants to read about winter. We want to get out of winter. We want to go to Mexico in winter. We want to just -- put me on a beach somewhere."

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And so I sent in a book that had, like, six chapters on spring, six on summer, six about the fall harvest, and then two chapters on winter. And I said to my editor and my agent, "Look, nobody wants to read about this, so let's just leave it at that." Well, you're an author, so you know exactly what happened. They sent it back and said, "No, you have more to say here."

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Wow.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And it turned out that the winter portion of the book was the most enlightening writing experience of my life. And I've done a lot of writing, multiple books, multiple news stories in my previous career. It was so enlightening for me. And my favorite chapter ended up being Chapter 17, because I remembered what winter does on the farm. I grew up in a small farming community, and a farmer would come into town when we were kids -- he had a lot of rocks in his field. There's a lot of rocks all over Iowa in different farming communities. And so we have to get the rocks out of the field, because if you leave them in the field, it will hurt the equipment. So a farmer would come, round up a bunch of kids, throw us all in the back of a pickup truck -- because we had high workplace safety standards -- and drove us out to his farm, and we would do what's called picking rock. Which is kind of a funny way to put it, because there was more than just one rock. There were hundreds, even thousands.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And they come up to the surface, because in winter there's something happening underneath with the frost-thaw cycle, so that by spring there are rocks there that weren't there in October and we got to move them out. And I got to thinking how interesting that is, because I think that we all carry around rocks, stones, burdens in the soil of our hearts. And most of us want to live in a constant cycle of plant, grow, harvest, plant, grow, harvest. Who wants to go through winter seasons? But if God made it so that the farm needs winter, one-fourth of the year is winter, then why wouldn't we need to do the same? And could we see winter as a gift? Could we winter well? So what that looks like for me is allowing winter to do its work in the soil of my heart, allowing those rock burdens to come forth to sit at the surface so that the Lord can come and essentially pick rock, and that together we can take those to the foot of the cross. I am not made -- you are not made to carry these burdens around. They hurt the equipment, so to speak. If our soil is covered in rocks and stones and burdens, it is very difficult to plant good things in the fields that God has given us.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And winter is an opportunity in that unproductive time of life to really look inward. And I know that can be a hard word to hear, because we'd rather be in the spotlight having great things grow. But these moments of solitude grow us in ways that we could never grow otherwise. God is so near and present in winter.

Jennifer Rothschild: Jennifer, I love that. I think you just gave a lot of people hope. Instead of resisting and rushing through winter, you're really saying give it its place in your life, give it its purpose, so that you can be ready to plant, to grow, to harvest. I just think that's such an encouragement. And a lot of us, I think, need to hear it, because not only may it be winter right now, but -- I mean, we just lived in the last year or so through our own winter. Like C.S. Lewis said, "Always winter, never Christmas." That's what the pandemic felt like.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: It sure did.

Jennifer Rothschild: And all that isolation, and it lasted months longer than we thought it would. But here's the thing. Now we're starting to kind of blossom again and get back in action and get back to normal. But during the pandemic, it really was some forced slowness, which was very healthy for a lot of people. So how would we -as life gets back to normal, how can we maintain this kind of mindset? Because it's easy to just be rushed back into the fast lane and then we miss out. So what can we do to keep a slow-living mindset so we can move forward?

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Yeah. Such a good question. And the first thing I want to say is I want all of us to think back to those first couple of weeks when it became real, when it became real that a pandemic had hit. I actually still remember the date. It was like March 13 of that year.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, me too, I remember.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And maybe it was that you got an email from the superintendent saying school's cancelled. Or your hairdresser messaged you that she's going to not be able to cut and color your hair and so you went and made the mistake of buying boxed color. Ask me how I know.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: You started counting your toilet paper rolls, I mean, whatever it was. But all of a sudden, our calendars were whited out. And it was wild. We had this opportunity to see what the world looked like previously inconceivable, what the world would look like if it shut down. People in Manhattan were saying, "It's so weird because now the birds are chirping louder." But they weren't, they weren't chirping louder. It's just that everything else was quieter, including all of us. And I think back to those first two weeks -- and I encourage anybody listening right now to think about it too -- and I think for a lot of us, we returned to things that mattered most. I took daily walks. And I didn't have a lot of hope for some things, but I did have an open door that led to a yard, that led to a sky, that led to me -- the reminder that God is still in this and creating beautiful things and moving through seasons. We had more meaningful family dinners, because everybody was actually here, and dinner became the thing we looked forward to. And then finally, I was more creative in figuring out how to be generous and loving toward my neighbor than I perhaps ever had before, because we weren't allowed to engage with our neighbors in the same way. We weren't allowed to hug people, we weren't allowed to go inside of their homes, and so we had to get super creative about all of that. And I'm not saying that I want to go back to, like, drive-by birthday parties --

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, right.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: -- but I do want to go back to figuring out how to bless people in the most creative way that I can, knowing how important that is. And I can kind of see how some of that is getting lost already. Those things that we wanted to hold on to are getting lost already because we're running back into the rush. But at the beginning of a new year, what would it be like for us to just think about what mattered most then and keep hold of those things that we cherished about that moment.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's a good word. And it reminds me of the framework in your book. You talk about these three things: remember, reflect, and return. And you've already alluded to those as we've been talking. So explain why you chose those three verbs, those three different actions, and how they help us to kind of do what you're describing to grow slow. I mean, you just talked about remembering.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Right. The three R's, yeah, it's there because every good Bible teacher loves some alliteration.

Jennifer Rothschild: Amen. Yes.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: It's there because it's been a daily practice of mine for so many years. And I actually didn't even know it was a daily practice, it's just one of those things I always did. And I think it's because it's just my sort of pondering personality. But I felt that it could be beneficial as a slowing down practice itself and it gives us a way to remember what matters most. So when we remember, we think back on something that is worth remembering. And it could be what happened in the first two weeks after our world changed. It could be a lyric from a song that you heard yesterday that really touched your heart. It could be a memory of Grandma. It could be anything. Something you read in the Bible. And you write it down and, just like any journaling practice, you reflect on it. What does that mean? What is the Holy Spirit speaking to me about this bit of wisdom and how can I carry that forward into tomorrow? And that's the "return" part of the three R's. So you remember the thing, you reflect on it. And then when you return, you return to the land that is your life, wherever you live, wherever you dwell, and think about what does it look like to apply that to the here and now where my feet hit the ground every morning? And so for me, in what I just did with remembering the two weeks after the pandemic hit, reflecting on what we did, as I return to the land that is my life right now, I want to put those practices back into place. And so it's really just a healthy journaling practice of looking back on what's worked for someone else, or what's worked for me, and carrying it forward in a meaningful way that has an impact on my life and the lives of those around me.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's brilliant. And it's very grounding, it's very centering. I think that's brilliant. And I appreciate the simplicity, because we can all remember those three R's, Jennifer, so that's very helpful.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: So most people that I know are in a perpetual state of rush -- okay? -- or feeling hurried or feeling that deadline pressure for whatever reason. It might be work, it might be even a self-imposed goal or deadline. But a lot of us feel it. And so you say in your book -- which I think is very interesting -- that time is our friend, not our enemy. So that could be a real freeing statement for some people, so explain why that's true.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: We look at time as this thing to beat, to be squeezed into boxes. We say things like, "I'm running out of time," or, "I don't have enough time to do that." And all of that kind of language sets up time as an enemy. And so as soon as our feet hit the ground in the morning, we're immediately feeling a sort of racing against it. And we see in Ecclesiastes 3 that God has actually made friends with time. He is telling us in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that he is making everything beautiful in its time. And so he holds time in a different way than we do. And I think there's a good lesson for us there in how to approach seasons and time and to treat it as a friend. And one way of doing that is really just changing a philosophy -- which I say "just," and it's not that easy. That's why it took me years and also writing a whole book about it. But this changing of philosophy where -- I think we all have a life that we're after, and that is good and God gave us that desire. I have no doubt about that. But too often we think that in order to get the life we want, we have to chase that life down. But we need to flip that around. Because to get the life we want, we don't want to chase that life down, we want to slow that life down. I don't want to get to my last days and look back on my life and think, wow, that was a blur, all I remember was sitting in front of a computer or not really engaging with the person in front of me who needed a bit of my time because my mind was racing to something else. I don't want to walk past a beautiful sunset. I don't want to miss the taste of a strawberry. I don't want to ignore the beautiful way that ice can create a chandelier on the back trees. I want to pay attention to these things. I want to see the gifts that God has given me. And, I mean, it even starts in our own home and our own backyard. Like, if I don't thank God for my own backyard, who will? I'm the only one who lives here, and I want to take the time to thank the Lord for these beautiful things that he has given, and for the time that he has given me here, instead of rushing through and regretting and feeling like my life was a blur.

Jennifer Rothschild: So here's our last question. So what wisdom would you give to the person who's been listening and they're like, "Oh, yeah, me, mm-hmm, I need that," and she's feeling like, "Okay, but you don't know my life. It's too late to reset the pace. This is just who I am, what I do, and what everyone around me expects." So how would you recommend that she does a reset?

Jennifer Dukes Lee: That is so good. And I am familiar with that person who would say those things, because I was that person. It used to annoy me to no end when people would say, "Jennifer, you need to slow down."

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be that person. But I do want to say that growing slow actually becomes your superpower. I thought that I would lose my edge or lose my job or something by slowing down. But what happened is I have come to my work and to all the things that God has placed before me in these fields with more enthusiasm and energy than I ever had before. At the end of the day I don't think, wow, I was busy, but I just wasn't all that productive. So if you do these things, you really end up becoming more productive. And it just seems so counterintuitive, but it's true. So I would encourage them with that. And then the other thing I would encourage is that so often when we think about growing slow, we're looking at outputs. We're looking at the seeds that we are planting in the fields before us and what we're growing. But what I would encourage everybody to do is to turn that around and think about Paul's words to the Corinthians when he said, "You are God's field." And so what that says to me is that God is planting seeds into me and into you. And we're not just the seed planters. We ourselves are being planted day by day. And God brought us here as little babies and decided to grow us over time through seasons, to plant us and grow us and harvest us and take us in through winter seasons. And he is growing the characteristics that he cares about most: faithfulness and generosity and kindness and steadfastness. And so don't disregard the things that God is growing in you right now.

K.C. Wright: One thing she said that really grabbed my heart was, "We don't want to chase life down, we want to slow life down." That's so powerful. I have to remind myself constantly, "Just be. Just in this moment."

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

K.C. Wright: Even this past weekend, I had a lot of things that I had to do, but I wanted to just savor every event instead of just blasting through them.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yep.

K.C. Wright: But I have to really discipline myself to do that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, that's what she's talking about. She said so much here, I thought, K.C., that was just comforting and convicting. In fact, following this episode, I'm going to have a quick bonus episode with Jennifer Dukes Lee, because I want you to hear the three practical ways to un-hurry your life that she just gave. So just stay with us, stay on this same platform where you're listening right now, and it'll show up. It's only going to be about 10 or 15 minutes long. But you're not in a hurry anyway, right?

K.C. Wright: And, if you're like me, you want to review this, so go to the show notes at 413podcast.com/175. I have a friend who loves the show notes. She's always telling me how much they mean to her. She's incorporated those in her daily time with the Lord --

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, I love it.

K.C. Wright: -- her show notes, the show notes there. So go read there, 413podcast.com/175. The transcript is there just for you. Plus, we will have a link to her book as well.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, and speaking of a new book, what a great way to start a new year. And I hope you become the best you you possibly can be this year. So I highly recommend the book.

K.C. Wright: Next week we're talking about how we can find grit to show up when we want to shut down. Been there, done that --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

K.C. Wright: -- have the shirt. Lisa Whittle of the Jesus Over Everything podcast, she'll be with us. So make sure you're following the 4:13 Podcast so you don't miss a thing. Okay? Until next week remember, whatever you face, however you feel you can do all things through Christ who gives you supernatural strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and K.C.: And you can.

K.C. Wright: True story.

Jennifer Rothschild: You know, K.C., I want to winter well. Like our people, let's allow winter to do its work.

K.C. Wright: Yeah. I'm chanting, "Remember, reflect, return. Remember --

Jennifer Rothschild: "Remember --

K.C. Wright: -- reflect --

Jennifer Rothschild: -- reflect --

K.C. Wright: -- return."

Jennifer Rothschild: -- return." You got it, brother.

K.C. Wright: I've got this.

Jennifer Rothschild: You got it. Hey, stay tuned. We're going to have that bonus episode with Jennifer Dukes Lee coming right up.

4:13 Podcast: Can I Unhurry My Heart? With Jennifer Dukes Lee [Episode 175 - PART 2]

Jennifer Rothschild: Hey, 4:13ers. Glad you stayed around for this bonus episode. And if you're just tuning in, make sure you listen to Episode 175 with Jennifer Dukes Lee so that this last bit of the conversation makes a lot of sense to you, because she is about to give us three practical tips for un-hurrying your life. And you need to hear this just as much as I did, so here she is. You talk about the importance of putting down roots, deep roots, you know, as you grow crops on the farm. So tell us why deep-rooted growth matters. Why does it have to be that way? And, you know, not only in the field, but in our lives.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: That's a great question. On the farm, our crops wouldn't last without deep-rooted growth. A corn plant, before it even appears above, has started to grow down. We're always talking about grow up, grow big, and really, let's all grow down, down down into the heart of things. And often in Iowa we'll have big windstorms. And you can wake up one morning after a windstorm, and the corn appears to be bent considerably and you'll think there is no way that that is going to yield any kind of a crop come harvest. But surprise, come November we will get some yield off of much of that field because the root system held that corn in place. And by the same token, during times of drought it can seem like there will be no good crop to come because it hasn't rained enough. But that corn plant fights to live and it throws down even deeper roots to go in search of water. And the same is true of us. If we're planted in shallow soil, when the storms of life come, we will be knocked over and we won't be able to bear the fruit that God intended us to bear. And also in those times of drought, which all of us have faced -- and if we haven't, we maybe someday will -- those times of drought are when we put down deep roots in search of living water that sustains us and helps us to grow and to produce some of the best crops of our lives that have come out of those drought seasons when we reached down and found Living Water and found Jesus to be faithful.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. So give us some very practical tools to help us become deeply rooted.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: So it begins with practical things of actually slowing down our everyday lives instead of hurrying through it. So the first thing that I did was adopt some of the principles of the slow food movement which was born in the 80s. And so some people are like, "What does food have to do with this?" Well, for me, food has to do with everything --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Amen.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: -- so I plan my whole life around meals. But what I noticed is in times when I was in a hurry, I was eating standing up. I was eating so quickly that I wasn't even tasting the food. Sometimes I was skipping meals. Or I'd start a meal and then I'd go do the laundry, and then answer an email, and, oh, yeah, there's my plate still sitting there two hours later.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: And God gave us food as a way to nourish our bodies and souls and as a source of enjoyment. And I wanted to be able to taste and see the Lord's goodness through the food that he has given, so I began to adopt those principles and sitting down with just simple things that I make every day, that nobody is necessarily sharing with me except the Lord at my table. And that creates a deep-rootedness in the simple things of life, the ordinary things of life. And I think it's a really important practice, something that people can do starting tomorrow.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Jennifer Dukes Lee: Another thing that people can do starting tomorrow is to stop multi-tasking. Multi-tasking creates shallow growth. Single-tasking helps you to really get done what needs to be done on a particular task. So while I'm on a podcast with you, this would not be very productive time together if I was also checking my email or communicating with somebody at the office store. I am all in for a deep-rooted conversation with you. And when I am done with this, I will do something else that is deep rooted, where I'm single-tasked and focused. So I think that's how it helps our work. And then also finally, another practice that people can do starting tomorrow is to wake up five minutes earlier to welcome the day. And that's even before you would open your Bible, and especially before you would open your phone. It's deciding what you want the tone of the day to be. If you want to talk to the Lord about it, say, "God, I don't know what's coming today, only you know, but I do know that I get to go into this day choosing to believe that you are good, choosing to believe that there are gifts in this day, and choosing to believe that things won't be ruined if I just take my time and enjoy little moments and refuse to go through it in a hurry." Whatever that looks like. And so it doesn't take very long, but it sets a tone for the rest of the day. Because otherwise what happens is when our feet hit the floor, we go immediately into fight or flight mode, and our adrenaline levels rise, cortisol levels rise, and we become little adrenaline junkies all day long, and that's just not a healthy way to live.

Jennifer Rothschild: I have no idea what you're talking about. I wish. That is such wisdom, it really is. It reminds me that -- especially even that waking up five minutes earlier. My friend Paula, she has some of these practices in her life. And one of them that she does, she literally gets like a lovely wine glass -- she doesn't drink wine. But she gets a lovely wine glass and she fills it with pomegranate juice, because that's good for her, something that she's trying to include in her life, and she literally will sit at the table, with her lovely glass full of the most sparkling pomegranate juice, and she will lift it up and toast the day. And I just think it's that beautiful idea that you are explaining too, and then, of course, that leads to just her time thanking the Lord for what the day holds.

K.C. Wright: Reminder, you can read a transcript and get her book at 4:13podcast.com/175. So go there. But don't hurry. Go slow. Grow slow.