Contributed by Darren Lim • Oct 13, 2026

My running shoes have sat untouched by the door for the past two weeks. Most mornings I wake before dawn, reach for my phone and check the air quality index, only to find the same unhealthy Index staring back at me. The haze has quietly taken away the one ritual I have come to rely on, and I did not realise how much I leaned on it until it was gone.

I would count myself an anxious and uptight person. Someone who feels time ticking away more acutely than most. I like to know what the plan for the day is before the day has even begun and as I tick off one item on my to-do list, my mind has already moved on to the next. The Cantonese have a saying for this restless state, likening it to having one’s feet scalded by hot water (滾水淥腳). I cannot stand still for long. I tend to hover briefly over one thing before hurrying on to whatever needs my attention next. If I am honest, that describes much of how I live.

This is why my long outdoor runs have meant so much to me. On a good day, I slip into a kind of flow where my mind switches off. The endless looping falls quiet for a while: the replaying of a past conversation, a problem I have been turning over, the concerns I carry for the future of my family. Yet even those moments are few and far between. More often than not, my mind keeps turning as hard as my legs. Now, with the haze, even that rare respite has been taken from me.

During this week’s message, I sensed in my heart that God was putting His finger on this nervous state I live in. It did not feel like a rebuke so much as an invitation. He was calling me to stop hovering, to pause and unplug for a moment and to spend time with Him. Not a slot squeezed in between tasks or another item to check off, but unhurried time in His presence.

When I shared this with a sister in Christ during our writer’s huddle, she gently suggested that I consider going for a weekend retreat. Something tugged in my heart the moment she said it. Perhaps this is something I need to plan for intentionally. I realise the irony that someone like me might have to schedule a pause in order to take one. But perhaps that is simply where God is meeting me, in the very way I am wired, and asking me to set the time aside for Him rather than for the next thing on my list.

I keep returning to the words of David in Psalm 27:4: “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek Him in His temple.” David wrote this with enemies closing in around him, a man with every reason to be anxious. Yet his one desire was not for a plan or a solution, but simply to be near God and to behold Him. David asked for one thing. I, on the other hand, come to God with a long list. 

I long to rest in His sweet promise of rest. To have room to pause and ponder, to marvel at the wonders of His creation and to catch even a glimpse of the holiness and glory of my God. I suspect the stillness I have been chasing on the road was only ever a shadow of what He has been offering all along.

I have not booked anything yet. The haze has not lifted and my shoes are still by the door. But for someone who has always asked for many things, learning to ask for just one feels like a place to begin.