It’s overcast and drizzly this morning and I am taking a break from organizing my massive to-do list to pause. Justin’s last shift here in Texas is a week from tomorrow and we will drive away from this little temporary home a few days later. Our departure has come upon me suddenly despite our extra month here, and I seem to be in “crunch time” for all sorts of things I’ve meant to figure out and finish over these last weeks. We’ve had plenty of time, really, but here we are, once again scrambling and likely to leave a few loose ends untied.

Maybe this is simply how all things work. Perhaps this is the story of our lives, this putting off because we feel like there will be more time “later.” And when the end arrives, it always takes us by surprise, leaves us with unfinished business we’d intended to get to “one of these days.” I can live with that…to an extent. If we don’t finish sorting through a few items that got randomly tossed into the camper, or nail down our plans to add solar to our camper before next week, or even fail to figure out a route out of Texas before we begin driving, I’m not too worried.

It’s the putting off of the big things: the dreams we are timidly waiting to begin, the damaged relationships we intend to repair when it’s not quite so complicated, the attention we’ll give to our spouse/child/pet/self-care “just as soon as ____ gets done” that worries me. The big endings that might catch me unaware. They hide around corners and jump out just when we get complacent, you know.

And isn’t this the whole point of why we’re doing this whole live-out-of-a-tiny-camper-and-move-every-three-months thing? Isn’t this putting off of the things that matter the precise habit we are attempting to break? Isn’t this one big ol’ attempt not to delay the dream we share of seeking place and experience and breathtaking beauty while we attend to the minutia of daily life, allowing it to eat our days, weeks, years…lives?

Isn’t life always in “crunch time”?

I suspect so. The power there is that when we operate in that way, it becomes just a little easier to separate the important from the urgent, doesn’t it? When I only have a week to finish everything, the “it would be nice” items start getting chucked off the end of my to-do list unapologetically and I’m left with only what is most important to me. For me in this moment, it is gleaning every last minute of time with my Mom and brother here in this place they call home. I will let the solar panels and website updates and camper-sorting wait so that I don’t miss these last days with them in a flurry of to-dos that won’t really matter so much in the long run. The power of “crunch time” is that, if we choose to pause in our momentary panic, our “oh shit…how am I going to get it all done?” frenzy, it can be a place for real clarity.

I’m grateful for that clarity right now. And for the flexibility that I’ve been learning over these last 9 months or so. We don’t know where our next assignment is yet, so we don’t know where exactly we’ll be pointing this little camper of ours in a week or so. But that’s okay. I’m learning that it will be just fine, crunch time and all.