Right to Rest

A life lesson that took me a while to learn: I don’t need to be told to take rest.

Rest doesn’t need to be a gift or an offering. It is something I take when I need it and ask for help in getting it when necessary.

I think taking rest is one of the most important things we can incorporate into our daily and weekly life, especially as parents. Our current culture loves to lie to us about the importance of the ‘hustle’.  So at first instinct, it might seem weak and lazy to take rest, but I argue that it is quite the opposite. 

You are straight up RADICAL if you choose to be somebody who ignores the hustle these days. There is nothing wrong with working hard, it is important too. But working hard and going non-stop without rest gets you to one guaranteed outcome: burnout. Just like our muscles need rest in-between workouts, our souls and our minds need that too.

When I am thirsty, I drink water. When I am hungry, I eat. And when I am weary… I rest.  And this week’s rest looked like two days in an airbnb on the lake all to myself. Dreamy. 

And guess what? Life goes on. My people are fine. The world doesn’t collapse when I get away for 72 hours. My husband can actually handle his own children just fine without me (gasp!).

Sometimes rest looks like different things. Sometimes it’s putting up a boundary when somebody is consistently dumping their problems on you. It looks like working out a schedule with your partner (emphasizing the word partner here)  that allows both of you to have breaks and do things you love. It can look like not needing to entertain your children every minute of the day and letting them play independently. Or sometimes it looks like praying for strength during a hard situation you know you cannot handle on your own. 

But usually rest looks like leaving the guilt of “I need to do it all and be amazing” at the door. We cannot actually do it all. Nobody can. I think we forget we are human sometimes.  I mean come on, even JESUS needed to escape to the wilderness to rest…so who do we think we are?

I have long left behind the Jill that wanted  to prove herself to the world and spend my days crazy busy and working towards all kinds of audacious goals (gosh it was exhausting to be her). My energy is limited. My time is limited. And I want to be sure I am doing WELL the things I think I was put on this earth to do.

 I don’t actually WANT to do it all. I want to do what matters. I still have goals I am working towards, but in order to actually achieve them I need to make rest a priority too. I fill my cup because my cup is worthy of being full, yours is too.