Here’s a thought that, for me, was revolutionary: Jesus doesn’t want your hustle. He wants your trust.

Cue brain explosions.

I am a person who has always had a loud schedule. I don’t like to say no or disappoint people, and I like to be viewed as reliable, productive, and efficient. I am an expectations-meeter, and my calendar has always been dictated by other people. My insides may whisper, “Say ‘no!’ This is too much!” but my default response is to squelch that little weakling, make her buckle down and get to work. My desire to outrun any possible accusations of “lazy” or “flaky” have led me to the verge of complete panic approximately a zillion times in my life. The pages of the planners I’ve owned have practically hemorrhaged inky scribbles and sticky notes, my colorful attempt to wrangle my life into order, to please everyone, to get everything done. It’s a shrill, neon scream: “THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO.”

I saw it on Pinterest and had a visceral reaction: “Good things come to those who hustle.”

It’s the rallying cry of the perfectionist, the list-maker, the big ball of stress. I am all of these things by nature. I need an A from everyone, and I will sacrifice sleep and sanity to get it. If I know I can’t get an A, well then, I better make people like me. In moments when I’ve lost the most control, when I battle the most anxiety and fear, I find myself telling joke after joke and story after story, desperate for the comfort of approving laughter, until eventually I get home and collapse in exhaustion, like an overworked circus clown, forever juggling juggling juggling on a unicycle. Hustle, man. Sometimes it looks like a list, and sometimes it looks like a red nose and face paint.