Why Your To-Do List Kills You!

to-do listMay I encourage you to toss your to-do list? It burdens you. It tempts you toward pride, if you get it done on time. Your list tempts you to despair if you don’t. It draws you farther from God. It kills you.

You know the killer to-do list, don’t you? It’s the one that intimates you’re not good enough. That you’re not pretty enough, or smart enough, or fit enough, or organized enough, or accomplished enough. On my to-do list for today are “go for a walk,” “send thank yous to banquet volunteers,” “write posts” (including this one. . .up to three right now) as well as 11 more work-related tasks. So far, I have four checked off and am beginning to feel like a worm because it’s 3:34 p.m. and I know I’ll fail to check them off … again.

And my worm mentality could wreck the rest of my day and steal sleep if I let.

But I won’t. You see, there is something much, much, much better than slavishly checking off my to-do’s. Would you like to know what it is? In a moment, I’ll tell you.

First, may I ask, what does your to-do list usually sound like? You’ll recognize it by phrases like:

  1. “go to the gym”
  2. “sign up Emily for karate, Michael for Baby Swim, and Jess for travel basketball”
  3. “organize the bedroom closet”
  4. “do devotions”
  5. “bake cookies for church”
  6. “email Emily’s teacher about science fair”

and on and on and on to ad nauseum. You may have in stored in your head or written on paper or in your Notes app. Like I said, it’s deadly.

Your To-Do List Sucks You Dry

Your to-do’s are the death of you because when we — you and I — begin measuring our worth against them, we come up short, way short. The messages we scribble on our list come from magazine covers, billboards, Pinterest, Facebook, even church. It’s a just-one-more yes kind of existence that drains and exhausts us and leaves us wanting. And dying.

I tried Pinterest a couple years back and signed up for a few boards, but my grilled veggies never looked as delicious as hers and hers and hers, and my pumpkin display couldn’t get even close, not even in the general vicinity of beauty as hers and hers and hers. So I quit.

Have I told you I have a hangup with jealousy? Do you struggle with jealousy too. Or perhaps worry? Or shame? Or exhaustion?

My crappy solution was to withdraw, which considering my mile-long to-do list, this may have been a good thing, a breather. Oxygen is healthy, right? Still, I had wished I could have done better and berated myself. And now — as I write this and my iPhone is tinging (7 in a row, no joke, I counted), reminding me that I forgot to put “figure out a way to get a spam blocker on my phone” on my to-do list — I’m feeling wormy … again.

This despair of not-enough-ness is my death.

Rather than speaking gospel truth to myself, I am chanting worldly lies. And lies kill. Remember what Jesus said about the thief aka Satan?

The thief comes only to kill and steal and destroy. I have come to give you life, life to the full. John 10:10

The Better To-Do

The better to-do is rather simple. It is believing in your okay-ness but not because your great or anything like that but because Jesus is great and he loves you.

Your okay-ness is smack-dab in the middle of his love.

Resist the world’s call to “Do more!” “Work for God!” (yes, a worldly message in church) “Look like 30 at 50!” “Be more!”

Instead rest in God’s truth that you are blessed and forgiven and perfect in Christ. Don’t these gospel truths speak life to your soul? Do they sound too good to be true? The thing is, they are true. The thief doesn’t want you to know that or to believe that. His sick game is to steal your rest and your joy and your peace.

As Elyse Fitzpatrick says, “The gospel is about broken people who are not simply “not okay” but who are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe. And although we know in our heads that we should ignore worldly ways of thinking, it’s something we have to work at all the time.”

The gospel — this good news — is right now, just as we are (you and me and every sister in Christ), we are our Father’s beloved daughters. He cannot love you any more or any less because he is love, perfect love.

God loves you and cares for you. He is for you. But your to-do list — the one that condemns us to pride and despair — kill it, embrace your okay-ness, and rest. You’re weary, aren’t you? Why not, relax?

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

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