Bondage

What is your bondage?  I know I have an addictive personality, which is why I avoid certain things like alcohol. I find anything I do, I jump in with both feet.  When I decided I needed a sewing machine so I could reassemble horse blankets that my horses had destroyed in their lip wrestling shenanigans, I bought the heavy-dutiest machine I could find with the help of my friend who was fluent in the ways of these mysterious contraptions.  She taught me how to use it, and now I work with leather, heavy nylon, eight layers of denim, and size 120 needles.

One of my burdens that comes with my bondage is overworking.  I love what I do, and I enjoy most of the aspects of running a large equine facility like this.  Except for scrubbing water tanks, I would rather do a rectal exam than scrub water tanks.  I do find that I am a workaholic, though.  It's not uncommon for me to put in 12-16 hour days in the summer, starting before the sun comes up and finishing as it's setting.  Partially this goes with having livestock as any farmer or rancher will tell you, but partially it is because I feel I only have value when I'm accomplishing something.  I don't feel this way about other people, I easily offer them the grace of rest days and lunch hours.  This is my self imposed bondage, working constantly to the detriment of my own physical and mental health.

I look to my Higher Power for help with this.  These passages describe what I'm hoping for:

Mosiah 24:14, 17, 21-22
And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.  
And he said unto Alma:  Thou shalt go before this people, and I will go with thee and deliver this people out of bondage.
Yea, and in the valley of Alma they poured out their thanks to God because he had been merciful unto them, and eased their burdens, and had delivered them out of bondage; for they were in bondage and none could deliver them except it were the Lord their God.  And they gave thanks to God, yea all their men and all their women and all their children that could speak lifted their voices in the praises of their God.

Relief from the pressing need to accomplish something, everything, in one day.  That drive inside to finish a to-do list which in actuality will never end, the fear of not having enough time in a day, in a week, in a lifetime.  Those are my burdens.  My bondage.

C.S. Lewis's character Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader described it well when he was trying to make it back to the ship before his companions departed an island without him. "He went very cautiously, for he could not see more than a yard ahead, and there was still perfect silence all around him. It is very unpleasant to have to go cautiously when there is a voice inside you saying all the time, "Hurry, hurry, hurry." For every moment the terrible idea of being left behind grew stronger."

This accurately depicts the sensation I have most of the time.  I must go cautiously in all I do with my life because as a perfectionist each thing must be correct.  However, it is very unpleasant because I have a voice inside me saying to hurry hurry hurry!  I once had a good friend who said if he could open up my head and peer inside, he would see a racetrack.  Each of my thoughts would be a car on the overcrowded track, all careening around at full speed.

I feel like I need permission to slow down, to rest.  I love the gospel because it gives me that.  Even God rested on the seventh day, and surely if God takes a day off I can (and should) too.  I completely understand that there are much heavier loads to bear than what I carry in this my blessed life, and that there are much more serious ways to interpret bondage and burdens.  But this is one way I look at these passages of scripture and in them I find relief.