Rest?

“You look tired,” a normal greeting from my beautiful and Australian accented mentor, Meegan, from my campus ministry. It was true. I looked tired, pretty much all of the time. I have developed this habit of investing too much into everything. While I was in college, I was taking full course loads, as well as being in at least 10 clubs, societies, groups…whatever. Most days I would wake up, at the latest, 7 a.m., charging through the day and getting home around 1 or 2 in the morning. You can ask my roommate in college, Gretchen. She will tell you that unless I scheduled you in somewhere, I would always be in the middle of something (and even then, I would still sometimes over book myself and miss friend/roomie time). Somehow I survived without my coffee addiction that didn’t come until later. 

I was blessed to be mentored by Meegan, one of our campus pastors. She always told me how confused she was about my schedule and how I survived each day. To be honest, looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I took the phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” literally.

So when Meegan gave me a challenge at the end of one of our mentoring meetings of sitting still for 5 minutes, I thought she was crazy. When it came down to it, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to do her challenge…but it was that I physically couldn’t. This idea of rest…it was foreign to me. My worth, everything I was known for was in what I accomplished and what I did. People saw these things and loved me for them, wanted me, and the organizations needed me for whatever role I played. Without these things, I thought there was no point to my being.

Heavy, I know, but it is the truth. Fast forward to my senior year of college and I still had no idea how to do this whole “rest” thing, but I vividly remember the day I decided to take my first “mental health” day and skip class. I did not skip classes. I was 100% that obnoxious student who was buddies with most of my professors and they knew when I wasn’t there. I felt guilty.

However, this one day, I woke up and realized that I had to just stop and take time for me. Covering all of my bases, I wrote and email to my professors and told them I needed a day off and I would make sure to get notes from someone else. Jumping in my 1996 green ford explorer (named The Hulk), sunroof open, my journal in the passenger seat, I drove out to Rainbow Basin, one of Kirksville’s hidden gems.

There is this tree there right passed where you can park your car. It is one of those big trees that looks like a sweet older grandpa. It is sturdy, kind of solitary, thick, and overhanging branches. It was still morning time when I arrived, so it was quiet and the sun wasn’t totally overhead yet, but it was still so bright.

I found my spot near the tree and sat, the prickly grass under my legs, and started writing until there was nothing else left to write.

I don’t know what I wrote and I have no clue what ended up happening to this journal.

​What I do know is that it was a good day.

Meegan still questions me today, five years later, if I totally understand resting. True, I have cut down significantly in my commitments, but still am busier than most. But, hey, I am a work in progress.

My questions for you this week are…how do you rest? What does that even look like? Can you afford to stop? How do we learn to rest?

We are in a society that says the busier we are, the more important we are. We brag to one another who has the crazier schedule both as a pity plea and hopes to impress each other. I never realized that this was my kryptonite. I wanted everyone to know how “important” I was because of how many things I was involved in. Sadly, my hopes of feeling wanted, needed, and loved back fired.

I found so much worth in being pulled in all of these different directions that my friends and those I really wanted to spend time with stopped attempting to hang out. They got so used to me being gone or busy with whatever that they just didn’t bother, fueling this eagerness for me to pour more into these different things…but left me feeling more worthless.

So when Meegan did challenge me to sit still for 5 minutes, you can understand my terror. In these five minutes, I was face to face with my biggest fear of being alone because I realized I didn’t love, want, or need myself. If I couldn’t meet these basic needs for myself, who or what could do it for me?

It is funny how many people I have met with similar stories. We desperately want others to find worth in us when we find no worth in ourselves and unfortunately, we mistake it for “humility.”

God did not create us for self-worship of ourselves, but to love God and the rest of God’s creation. However, in order to love others, we must first recognize the creation in ourselves that is God’s temple.

The reason I bring all of this up is that in my 27 years on this earth, I have slowly had to learn this process of loving myself instead of solely focusing on others for the feeling of worth. This lesson was only taught in the times of rest with God. It was in the quiet stillness that I found God’s first language…silence. To realize that I had no idea who I was at my core and realizing that God wanted to show me.

Today, dear friends, I pray that you make time daily for God to show you what wonderful and true creation you are; to take care of yourself. This rest may take many different forms: from exercise to meditation, from painting to singing and dancing, may you find a way to connect with God in true Sabbath.

If you continue on fumes, there will be nothing left to give.

How is God calling you to rest today? What fears do you have in just stopping and taking care of yourself?