Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Rest.


Resting is always an area I've struggled with. My entire life I have thrived on being busy and going non-stop, as do most modern Americans; because we've been almost trained in a way to view being busy as a sign of success. Even amongst friends or co-workers, all the time I hear competitions of who is busier or who has less free time. This mindset has done so much harm to our psyche, and has truly twisted rest into being lazy, when really rest was created FOR us, and a God-given example of rest started at the very beginning with creation.

We were created for rest. God mirrored that example Himself. After all of creation, He rested for an entire day. Did he need to? Probably not, but He understood it's importance. We are human and fallible - needing rest. It's not a sin. It's not something to feel guilty about. And our pride for wanting to be the busiest person shouldn't get in the way of that. Don't mistake rest as being something you're too good for or don't need. Or, if you're like me, don't view it as you are somehow being weak because you need a minute to just get away from everyone and everything. Being chronically ill for my entire life has made me always feel in the back of my mind like I need to prove myself or keep up with healthy people and do just as much as they do, if not more. Recognizing my limitations has always been one of the hardest things for me to do, and certainly is not something I have successfully accomplished- it's always going to be an ongoing fight. But I, moreso than my healthy counterparts, need to rest physically. But our culture has so twisted this God given gift into a sin.I would imagine people have different reasons for not wanting to rest - trying to "keep up with the Jones'", trying to distract themselves from thinking or stewing about a situation/relationship, wanting to prove something, etc. The list could go on for miles! Before feeling like I needed to write this post, I had a real-life moment with myself and with God. Why can't I just rest and relax? I think a huge part of it is so many of us feel guilty for resting.

Most of this post has been about physical rest, but it applies to mental/emotional rest as well. I find myself so many evenings unable to sleep because my mind is RACING. It's truly exhausting! And are any of those thoughts worth losing sleep over? No. Most of them are "what if" questions or walking through every possible scenario for a situation, 99% of which will never actually happen. Until the recently, I've been working or on-call 24/7. To say that I've been getting burned out would be quite the understatement. The past week or two I have noticed quite a few opportunities for me to not have work things on certain days, or getting an unexpected day off. Our natural instinct upon getting these opportunities is an entire day or a couple extra hours to do more work! Running errands, cleaning the house, running around town...none of these are bad things and are in fact necessary! However, when they begin to replace rest, trouble arises. BUT! Instead of doing that, I chose to accept this gift of time, and intentionally rest. And it was SUCH a relief! Forcing myself to get away from my phone, get away from work, and just have a nice relaxing day did wonders for my mental status and physically was great too. And I felt convicted about how I feel about rest in general and how I've been praying about it. Most of you have heard before that when you pray for patience, chances are you're going to be given situations in which you should be patient, rather than being gifted patience itself, and I believe the same is true for rest. So often I pray for strength to get through each day, sometimes each hour (which has it's place in life, for sure); but instead, what if I am being given these little intervals of rest and I'm just missing them? We are called as Christians to lay our burdens down at Christ's feet. We have been given this insane opportunity to not have to carry our own burdens, and how often do we take advantage of it? I know I don't nearly enough, not even close.

Whatever your reason for not resting, whether it be physical/emotional/mental - find out what it is. Once you get down to the reason, you can figure out the best plan to begin resting. Rest for every person may look different, but we all need it. There's no harm in it, and it is in fact encouraged! So often we think of following Christ as going out to all the nations and witnessing (which it is), but we often overlook taking care of the temples God has gifted us for bodies, and we are called to protect and care for ourselves as well. So do yourself a favor today, even if it's 5 minutes, disconnect from work, family, situations going on and just REST. Who knows, maybe God will even use this time to show you something.