Restless to Restful

Want to know something ironic? Last December I took some quiet time to intentionally meditate on a word for 2020. I wrote a blog post about it even. It’s not a word I choose for myself, it’s a word that chooses me. It’s a word that God leads me to anchor my year around. The funny thing is the reason the word chooses me often ends up being very, very different than the way the word actually shows up in my life. Without fail every year there’s a twist.

This year the word that was chosen for me? 

Rest. 

Please don’t blame Covid19 on the word God chose for me to learn a lesson! When the word first chose me I chuckled. A single mom starting a new business… Rest? Good one, God. Really cute. How on earth was I to find rest between the notes and margin in my days? Turns out I didn’t need to find anything, rest would find me. 

A few months into this year my world, much like yours, started to unwind. It was an abrupt stop to what I thought were life’s needed demands of me. I find it very hard to rest. If I take a day off, panic starts to set in as my work doesn’t just double the next day, it’s seemingly quadruples. It feels like rest is not something afforded to me. I know that’s not actually true, but that is what it can feel like. You get addicted to the chaos. 

Leave it to God to shut down my world to prove me wrong. To show me how necessary rest is. Days that felt much like keeping plates spinning and schedules juggling started to become undone. Days that were fueled with caffeine and chaos slowed to easy mornings and carefree days. My brain was re-booted to have space for creativity, leisurely conversations and carefree timelessness with those who matter most to me.

I could feel the monstrous machine of my mind come to a halt. For the first time in years my doing mentality had come undone. The pendulum had stopped it’s momentum and my world stood still. The impossible had become possible… Me, a single mom building a business and re-discovering herself was able to find rest in the midst of it all.

I had become addicted to the noise, hustle and upkeep of what I thought life needed of me. All of these things? No one ever asked of me, I assigned to myself. I had spun myself into a world that left out a necessary ingredient, rest.

In my rest I found time to create, paint and read. I found space to sit with no agenda other than to just be. I fell into conversations that weren’t dictated by time or schedules but my interest and love. I found tender spaces and hurt pieces that needed extra mending and rest allowed healing I’ve been longing for.

Have you found rest? What has rest woken you up to? What has been undone in your world thanks to rest?

I’m so thankful for this great awakening and re-centering of what truly matters to me. I don’t want to forget how life feels right now and the rest I have allowed myself. May we not forget how important these last few months have been and may and never take a worldwide pandemic again for me to value rest.