Rest is For Me

Macrina Wiederkehr writes, “I have learned that way down underneath all the busyness, something (or is it Someone) waits for us to come home to who we truly are.”¹ It sounds good to come home to who I truly am, a beloved child of God. I long for it, and yet there are times when I resist this movement from distracted activity to spacious pause, because it means that I will come face to face with my own questions and doubts. Pause is the breeding ground for my shadows and insecurities to emerge, unaccustomed to the light.

Historically, I have struggled to receive rest. I would try to take a Sabbath day and immediately feel the strain of responsibility, or the invasion of unexpected interruptions. Honestly, there have been years when I have assumed that a Sabbath is not for me. I am a doer, a thinker, a caretaker, and a list-maker. Rest? This must be for another person, or at least for another season, one in the far distant future.

In recent years, through the sweet invitations of scripture, my spiritual director, and my ongoing work in spiritual formation, I have carved out time for rest but still felt the imperfect nature of it. For some reason, I felt like real rest was supposed to be perfect rest, some kind of blissful state of not caring about anything. God has been teaching me a different way recently, that real rest is real rest, meaning, that real life will happen, AND rest is still for me.

At the end of January, I fell down some stairs in my house. There were not a lot of stairs, but the impact was intense. Early on in my recovery process, my initial physical therapy appointment scheduled a few weeks out, I tried to continue with normal activities, which often resulted in more pain. But I told myself that it was just a matter of pushing through the discomfort, that the injury would heal on its own.

During one of my first PT sessions, the therapist explained to me that even though most of my pain was concentrated in my neck and shoulders, the rest of my body felt the effects. She also told me that my nervous system was inflamed and that my entire job at that point was to help my body calm down. To fully heal and ultimately meet my goal of pain-free movement, I had to pause. My work was to not work.

Unsurprisingly, the other areas of my life were beginning to feel the impact of my injury. After a revealing session with my spiritual director, I sensed an urgent (but gentle) invitation to create more space in my schedule. I added margins around meetings and began pausing a bit more often during my days. As I slowed down physically and logistically, I noticed that I was paying more attention to my emotions and my soul. Instead of pushing against inflammation in my body, environment, or interior, I made space to name it without judgment and look for the nearest opportunity to rest.

As my body has healed, I have begun to safely and slowly add in more activity, now with guardrails in place for preventing further injuries. The same is true for my schedule. There are more meetings again, but I am discovering how to build intentional space for Sabbath days and moments.

I feel like I must learn this same lesson seasonally – is this true for you as well? And even when I learn it, I’m like a baby deer trying to figure out how to walk for the first time. It turns out, real rest is filled with real life, and that dynamic relationship between life and rest is exactly the place where Jesus invites me to let go and receive the rest that is for me.

I am increasingly moved by the reality that rest in God is possible anywhere, that larger pockets of rest are possible even when real life invades, and that the fruit of our rest is evident in the more active parts of our living. I love the way that Howard Thurman frames this Spirit-filled connection:

“I am determined to live the outer life in the inward sanctuary. The outer life must find its meaning, the source of its strength, in the inward sanctuary…What I do in the outer will be blessed by the holiness of the inward sanctuary; for indeed it shall all be one.” ²

Rest is not reserved for the moment when all the tasks are complete, for then it will never be possible. Rest is a gift from God, for the renewal of our bodies and souls, and for the sake of our presence in the world.

“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his.” ³

-------------------------------------------------- 1. Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses, p.11. 2. Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, pp.173-174.

3. Hebrews 4:9-10, NRSV.