I’m back in that place again.
Last night, I stayed up later with the puppy, hoping she’d sleep a few minutes later this morning. When I woke early to the sound of puppy whining, I realized that tactic was unsuccessful. Add not enough sleep to the past week and a half with multiple shifts in the hospital overnight and I’m dragging. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get caught up and feel rested…
This is the guilty look after she chewed up the insole to my shoe…
So I’ve been reading (actually, I’m always reading multiple books at once). It seems like I get on a theme and the books I stack up at the side of my bed are about the same topics. A few months ago, I was reading about emotional eating. That was a tough one! This past month’s reading was about environmental stewardship, and this month I’ve been reading about the sabbath and rest.
Doesn’t seem related, does it? Here’s what’s odd: While I was reading my book on Christian environmental stewardship, I switched over to the book on sabbath rest and both books were talking about the same thing. Both books were making the point that humans and land need care, and part of that care is rest. Just as the land needs rest for regeneration to continue to yield the crops, so do people.
Now, this isn’t exactly a foreign concept to me. I regularly note that rest (primarily sleep) is an absolute requirement to function well. My kids behave better when they get enough sleep, and I certainly can get through the day better when I’ve slept well. The issue of rest is somehow different to me though. I don’t know why, but my normal way of being is to run as hard as a can all day long, from waking to bedtime. Even if I take a nap, I rarely block an afternoon or an evening to rest. What is rest anyway? I wrote about rest vs recreation before, but I can tell you for sure I still don’t have it right. When I take an evening away from my normal to-do lists, I still fill up the time with a TV show, or a stack of books I want to read, or try out a new recipe. I can’t remember a time I sat down to just think and reflect. I’m not even sure I know how to do it.
My stack of books doesn’t even fit in the basket anymore…
So what does rest really look like anyway? I think most of us make the mistake of thinking that if an activity is fun that it qualifies as rest. Reading books and watching TV certainly is fun to me. I enjoy accomplishing goals I’ve set, so I actually like making to-do lists and crossing things off. Going out to dinner and hanging out at an outdoor concert is recreation, but I’m not sure it qualifies as rest. The best I can figure is that rest needs to result in restored well-being. The dictionary definition is “to cease work or movement in order to refresh oneself or to recover strength”. I think restored well=being is pretty close to that! That’s where I run into trouble: So much of what I do doesn’t qualify as rest according to my own definition. And no matter how much I want it and how much I believe that rest is critical to my well-being, I keep filling my time with things that seem more important.
Let’s call that what it is – a lack of faith. Seems extreme? It’s not, and here’s why. Why do I prioritize doing things over rest? It’s because primarily I’m afraid that I won’t get things done if I rest. Here’s why I know it’s a lie: I still watch TV and read books. When I’m recreating, I don’t think as hard about the fact that I’m not getting things done, mostly because I’m too distracted to notice. If I rest, the worry that I’m not getting things done gets louder. The worry comes from my lack of trust that what needs to be done to move my life ahead is dependent on me and my efforts. It comes from the thought that the direction of my life depends on me and not on God. I know better, but I don’t act like it. Romans 9:16 says, “It does not. therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy”, and Matt 6:25-34 tells us not to worry, as if doing so could add even on hour to our lives. And even though I know this, living it still challenges me. But isn’t that life; just one faith journey after another? Learning to trust the plan that we don’t completely see, in the details we think we do see, and knowing that God knows them all.
The good news is that I’m taking a solo retreat weekend away again soon. The temptation for me is to plan to fill up the time away with things to do and catch up on. I’m fighting it though! I wonder what it would be like to just rest into the time and allow it to pass, to listen to God in the peace, and to practice the rest and listening so I can keep it with me, moment to moment. That’s what I’m going to practice, and I’m sure God will bring from it what he has in mind.
How about you? Do you make time to rest, or do you run from work to recreation and back again? How do you make room for rest in your life? Please share in the comments below!