Rest Assured

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."                    

         ~Matthew 11:28 

I've noticed in the last couple years that I've felt my introversion more physically than emotionally.

I've traded emotional breakdowns for the inability to stay awake when I've overdone it socially. Maybe this is because, since COVID, I see significantly fewer people throughout my day than I ever did before, or maybe it's just another way we fluctuate throughout our lives. But it's a response I haven't learned to expect.

After a week of wonderful socializing though, it took everything in me to get out of bed and go to work. And when I got there, God nudged me towards taking part of the day off. 

I don't consider myself rest-averse, I value a Sabbath, I know I need time to recharge, I have a flexible job, and I have plenty of PTO that won't rollover if I don't use it. The message was there, the opportunity was there, and yet I took a lot of convincing.

Why?

Comparison

My coworker doesn't have a lot of opportunity for rest. Her PTO is a lot more limited than mine, and even when she has time, she has children that depend on her. Why should I get to take time off because I'm tired when she can't? It wouldn't be fair. I'd feel guilty. What if she was bitter? If I have kids in the future, I won't be able to rest then, so why should I rest now? And it's more than just her. So many people don't have the PTO that I do or the flexibility to get approved for a spontaneous half day off. How could I take advantage of what I have when they don't have as much? I don't know fully what my motivation was for this one, but I know it was my strongest line of defense for staying at work.

Productivity

Rest is a foreign concept in the US. We're made to be productive. If we're not at our job, we're doing chores or projects or going on outings or whatever will fill our time. We have to work. PTO can be used for vacations, obligations, appointments, something definitive and active in its own way. If we sleep in or nap when we have things to do or let time pass without action, we're lazy. We're selfish, we're privileged--we can find so many other adjectives. Rest reflects poorly on our character.

Stubbornness

I can power through. I can make it. I shouldn't take off work.

Feelings

This one hit me after I'd already decided to take a half day. I felt better, more awake, like I could actually make it through. My tiredness had lessened; my focus had improved. Taking the day off no longer seemed necessary. What I felt had changed, but what was true hadn't. I still needed rest.

It's often when we most need rest that we're more inclined to deny it. Our hearts are restless, and they don't know how else to be. Thankfully, God was persistent, but even when I got home, productivity tried to fight its way into my rest.

My first thought was of all I could do. All the restful, enjoyable activities that I was going to try to force into my hours of rest. I gave most of those up pretty quickly, but I don't always. I laid on my bed, intending to prayer journal and then go on a walk, but my mind started to drift. 

I resisted.

What if I fell asleep? I might miss my walk. Or my prayer journal.

The walk was always meant to give me rest, and yet I was letting the idea of it remove me from rest? I let it go.

The prayer journal was different. I kept thinking of things I wanted to delve into that I worried I'd forget. On top of that, I had been avoiding God, and I knew my soul needed that time with Him. But didn't God know that too? Couldn't I release it to Him and trust Him for that time? And if I could trust Him for that, I could trust Him to hold all the little thoughts I wanted to journal too. I could accept whatever rest came in that time, trusting that He would provide the rest. I fell asleep.

I needed that sleep, but I fought it so hard. I wanted it, but I was so unwilling to receive it. 

What makes rest so hard is that it requires dependence. I can't do, I can't control, I can't rely on myself. When I don't have enough time for rest, I have to trust God with the activities I'm holding onto. I have to let go and receive. No productivity, no performance, just resting in Him for my worth and leaving striving at the door.

This was God's first message to the Israelites. After 400 years of slavery, as being seen only as a vessel of labor, God told His people that they were more than what they could do. That He rested and they should too. That rest was part of their design, and that they were secure in Him. 

Rest changes things. It changes where we get our value, it changes how we prioritize, it changes how we relate to the world around us.

God was so intentional in something as simple as me taking a nap. He knew how much rest affects us even when I didn't. And although, I'm not always conscious of it, the world looked different when I woke up. I paused. I took time to be still. Instead of passing over the trinkets in my room, I noticed them. I noticed how their colors tied in with various accents in the room which had never been planned, and I delighted in the way the decor tied together. Really simple things took my breath away because my heart was willing to slow.

Delight is a key part of rest. One of the reasons rest makes the world around us more beautiful is because delight takes time. It requires that we notice what is around us and that we dwell in them until their beauty seeps in. When our minds are hurried or clouded by other things, what's right in front of us often passes us by. 

But God wants us to delight. He wants to give us rest.

No matter how much we resist His good gifts.

When rest feels impossible, He creates time for it even in our framework of it. Where we see only a full schedule, He highlights unexpected opportunities for stillness. Opportunities that we miss when we don't place value on rest. Yet He is still persistent, and it's a testament to His kindness and care for us.

In this weary world, our God wants to give us rest.

This is a goodness that is so simple that we seldom let it pierce our souls, but it's powerful in practice. 

Only through Him can we receive rest. Can we stop validating and justifying ourselves and know Him. Can we stop our worth from being dictated by our ability. Rest tunes us to His goodness. It keeps us from striving so that we may receive. True rest is not the absence of work but the presence of God, and it will always draw us nearer to Him in seen and unseen ways.

In the place of stillness, we know God in ways that we miss when our hearts are hurried (Ps. 46:10). So today I invite you to join me. To put down productivity and to-do lists, to consider how much of what needs to get done is actually a need, to let your time be unplanned and unobstructed, and to rest.

It's hard--we are a tired and rest-averse people living in the world that trained us--but it's worth it. And the invitation is always open.