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<h5 style="padding-left: 210px;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/ilker/">ilkerender</a></h5>
The other day I heard the phrase <strong>"Let your soul catch up with you"</strong> for the first time.

You know those moments when you see or hear or taste something for the first time, and you know right away it's new and special? It was like that for me. "Let your soul catch up with you" resonated immediately, even before I had time to think about what it really meant or how it might translate in my life.

I realize that this phrase has the potential to turn quickly cheesy. Imagine it, for instance, printed on an inspirational poster and hanging in the office of a Christian counselor, or as the title of a self-help book, written in an outdated font across a badly designed cover.

But I heard the phrase in church, as spoken words coming out of the mouth of Jim, one of my favorite pastors. He was talking to us about listening to God—why it's important, what keeps us from doing it, and how we can each find methods to help us to do it better in our own ways. <strong>I instantly realized that I am way too far out ahead of my soul, submerged deep in the white noise of life.</strong>
<h3>Letting my words catch up with my ideas</h3>
The first image this phrase brought to me, strangely enough, was the sensation of working on those old word processor/typewriters of the late 80s and early 90s. Remember those? They looked like an electric typewriter but they had those little readout screens, and didn't actually print out the section you had just typed until you hit return.

I have been an ultra-fast typist since taking typing class in high school (this seems like something random enough to safely boast about, right?). I distinctly remember working on those word processors, knowing exactly what I wanted to say, my fingers flying to keep up with my mind. And then I had to wait, as the words I had already typed eventually appeared on the little screen, waiting for them to catch up, like an echo of my thoughts.

<strong>Waiting was important—I didn't want to get too far ahead of myself and end up making mistakes. </strong>The thoughts might take flight from my mind in an impressive fashion, but that didn't mean they'd land properly or ring true once printed in black and white. When you hit return, after all, it was still ink on paper, just like a typewriter—making edits took some effort.

So I waited for all of those ideas to catch up to me. I checked them against my heart and let them begin to settle in, before hitting return and picking up where I left off, ideas and fingers flying.

At the time, I despised the word processor's leisurely pace. I hated waiting, and felt sure that being held up in this fashion would set me back in some important way down the road.

Now I can see that I've lost a lot of good along with whatever shreds of care and patience I had back then. Today, even a moderately slow computer or internet connection drives me batty. <strong>There are plenty of annoying interruptions in my day, but there isn't anything forcing me to practice slowing down and waiting—not in my writing, and certainly not in my soul.</strong>
<h3>Learning to be more like a sherpa than an old word processor</h3>
As Jim shared with us in his teaching Sunday, the phrase "Waiting for your soul to catch up" is actually rooted in Himalayan sherpas, not in outdated technology. (Isn't it amazing how our minds naturally gravitate toward the analogies we can relate to?)

The story is that sherpas, who spend a lot of time encouraging, pushing and pacing their climbers toward the summit, will suddenly stop climbing and put down their equipment, as if they're waiting for something or someone.

Not surprisingly, this seemingly random break is very disconcerting for many Westerners. When they ask why they've stopped climbing, the sherpas' reply is "We are waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies."

I move too quickly. My thoughts fly and swirl, and I can generally relate to the word "frenzy" far more readily than to the word "calm." I try to push through big ideas and major life changes in record pace; if they don't resolve themselves quickly, my impulse is to simply abandon them and move on.

<strong>But I don't want to get too far ahead of my soul, any more.</strong> I certainly don't want to think of my soul as a clunky, antiquated, annoying old word processor that I'm forever waiting on.

Instead, I want to be like the sherpa—to take in the view, to allow my racing mind and body to rest, and to respect the wise pace of my soul as it catches up.