The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever. ~ Psalms 23

It is a constant in my life. This need for the Power of Pause (POP). In my trainings I hear it constantly: “After a major insight, stop.” “After you ask a question, stop.” “When you don’t know what to say, stop.” The latter is called the “therapeutic silence.” I use it when a client provides a Fix It situation. My job is not to “fix” anything, I help give them the tools to fix whatever it is. I’m more like Lowes than the local Handyman.

Just this past week POP came up again. Listening to John Maxwells “15 Invaluable Laws of Growth” he talks about allowing time for your mind to catch up with what you have learned. He recommends taking time to stop and think in your day, month, and year. To take advantage of POP.

I was able to put this into practice recently. Traveling with my husband and me is always an adventure. I had one of my “feelings” that we would have vehicle trouble. We start on a 3 hour trip to Frisco the night before we were to travel to a show that was my Christmas gift. We were going the night before due to my “feeling.” Sure enough we get an hour up the road heading through Waco, Texas, and my truck starts sputtering to a stop at each stop light. We pull into an Auto Zone and try to identify if the problem is easily fixable. After some added oil and 20 minutes of idling, the decision is made to head back home and change vehicles out (8:15 pm), we get one light down the road and the truck again sputters to a stop. Nope, not gonna happen.

We make the decision at 8:30 to call AAA and get a tow truck to haul her back home. After much debate and several phone calls, we determine that getting a rental from Waco was not going to be an option. Extremely nice tow truck driver arrives (9:30) and gets us back home after a short detour (11:00), we change out vehicles and get back on the road (11:15). We arrive in Frisco (2:30am). During this time we were provided an hour to stop, think, and talk. Granted, I would rather have gotten to the hotel and had a good night’s sleep, but then what would I have had to talk about this week? During this pause, we talked about my business, vacation plans, Romania plans, future plans in general. We had to time identify why we needed to upgrade vehicles (and I mentally ran the numbers to see what we could afford). We had time to be with one another without TV, internet, or anything to distract.

When you have times this year when things seem to break down, instead of getting frustrated, recognize if this is a time to accept the POP, and ride out the wave.