Rest is best

We live in a society that holds up busyness like it’s some kind of badge of honour. This can be destructive when taken out of the context of a fuller picture. The ability to knuckle down, focus and do what we must to honour our positions as adults, is essential. As is, humbling ourselves to acknowledge our limitations and struggles and asking for help when we need it. However, like anything in life, if we do not balance this with as dedicated a commitment to the need for rest, we will likely end up exhausted, depleted or even burned out.

A prolonged period of burning the candle at both ends of the day, eventually leads to a candle that burns out completely. It can be a lengthy process to rest enough to reclaim one’s spark after this.

The more we live bound by technology, addicted to our phones and being constantly available through numerous forms to all around us, the more ineffective/disengaged/unavailable and ineffective we become. Was it Steve Jobs who banned his kids from having mobile phones?

Humans need to rest.

These body’s of ours are so complex that we are learning more about how they work, all the time. We are also starting to return to the age old wisdom of our predecessors who lived more in their body’s and less in their heads. I don’t imagine that during hunting expeditions with the express goal of securing dinner, fellow hunters were worrying about what their fellow hunter was chasing or what anyone back at the cave was thinking about them!

We have access to our whole body of knowledge and wisdom, (no pun intended) yet often busy ourselves to such a degree that we miss or dismiss this.

The antidote to this is to slow down, pipe down, sit down and at regular points, allow oneself to disengage brain and simply be in the body. Whether to pay attention enough to notice what our body is asking of us, or to enjoy the world around us and be available to those we meet along the way.

These complex bodys of ours are constantly working in ways that are invisible to us but vital to our organs, functioning and health. When we fail to let the body be still enough to dedicate resources to all the behind-the-scenes work, we become tired. When we ignore this, we become vulnerable to becoming ill. The go-go-go approach to life will possibly fast track us to the gone-and-not-coming-back stage.

We need to give ourselves permission to fall back in love with the art of rest. Or if we refuse to do this, we must at least accept, consciously, that we are choosing to sacrifice our quality of life/peace/health/enjoyment.

Recently, I’ve become increasingly aware, particularly amongst women, (it’s present in a slightly different way for men) that we have internalised a set of man/family/culture made rules that say we must constantly strive/slog guts out/work long hours/override the bodily warning systems/drive self to an early grave/ in order to be seen as, ‘hard working’, or to avoid being seen as ‘lazy’ or ‘work-shy’. There is of course an entire range between these two extremes.

When we have internalised these ‘rules’ of rigidity that restrict our life/work/play/rest balance, it can be hard to update them. Yet the older we get, the more our body protests when we push it beyond its limits. We would do well to heed these warnings and respond accordingly. When we identify the rules that restrict us, we can begin to update them to support us to learn, grow and heal.

Rest is not cheating/laziness/weakness/waste of life/incompetence/something to do when dead, unless in a hurry to get there.

Rest is the best medicine (after healthy love) that we can commit to giving our bodily systems on a regular basis. We refuse it this most basic need to our own detriment. Times of stress/illness; physical or psychological require increased rest to support the natural healing process. To refuse this is to take resources away from the healing process, thus prolonging it.

Recently I lent someone a book. I think all women, especially Christian, who have been indoctrinated in to believing that God has a whip at our backs constantly, should read it.

It is, ‘Nice girls don’t change the world’, by Lynne Hybels (Lynne is a wonderful woman and writer who also happens to be a pastors wife).

This book speaks to the subject of women believing they have to earn God’s love. Or else. I’m not sure or else what, but it doesn’t sound appealing.

Anyway, Lynne speaks of her own process of recognising, it was not God who was driving her so hard. She realised that she was exhausted and resentful, accompanied by guilt, because ‘nice, especially, nice Christian girls’ don’t feel such sinful feelings, right?!

What a crock of the brown stuff! And, we are not girls but grown arse women who often need support to identify the man-made, ego massaging rules that we carry inside us. Once we recognise them, we can align and update them to fit God’s truths. I don’t know whether I believe the literal translation of God making the world in six days but I trust the point that if God needs to rest, man/woman definitely do.

Here is one of my favourite passages from Lynne, which is a response she got from God. (additions in brackets from me).

‘I love you so much that I want you to rest. I want you to sit and receive the refreshment of my creation. I want you to listen to music. I want you to dance in the quietness of your bedroom (lounge/supermarkets/all over the shop). I want you to be like a child, secure and free in the presence of an adoring parent.

I want you to know that all those years when you were working so hard to try to please me, I was trying to tell you to slow down. I saw you KILLING YOURSELF from the inside out and I tried to stop you. But the many false voices in your head (internalised man-made rules) drowned out the single true voice in your heart’.

I love this! If we have been driving ourselves this hard, we can stop doing this!

Once I read a great quote, I can’t remember who by, which said something like,

‘The fun is not in having nothing to do, but in having lots to do and choosing not to do it’!

A non-negotiable part of adulting is that there is always work to be done. An optional approach to this is constantly reassessing the priority that really cannot wait, as well as that which can. This must also be aligned to our body’s capacity at the time. Again, if we’re in deficit, we may need to ask for help.

This is not easy but it is an essential, everchanging, part of healthy adulting.

As a self-confessed crap-at-resting human, I am becoming increasingly committed to practising rest. My body has made repeated interventions in recent years to slow me down or totally floor me. Sometimes I learn embarrassingly slowly. But I do learn. Eventually!

And I use what I know about myself to help me to strengthen this weakness of mine. For example, I just had a week in Portugal. I love the sunshine, although not directly on my head or face. I love being warm, but not too warm. Ditto cold! Even more tricky when your body’s barometer is up the creek due to the refurb of peri. And I like water; gazing at it, paddling in it, swimming, running alongside it and watching the sun rise or set over it. Therefore, I cancelled a break I originally booked that was very different to this and not what I needed at this time. Instead, I booked the break that gave me all of the above and some, because I needed it.

While I find it near impossible at times, to sit still, if I am warm, with an amazing view and the option to get wet, I can just about do it. Nature is one of my most effective assistants to support me to rest. I am blown away by the beauty of creation in each and every season. This means that I stop to see, savour and be soothed by it. It aids my quest to indulge in sufficient times of rest-festing.

Whatever supports us to rest or prevents us from doing so (internal rules about it), rest is an essential part of ongoing maintenance.

If you need help with any of this, please feel free to complete a prayer card at Ozzie’s Bites n Breezes. Even better why not pop in for a lush coffee or some eats to stop, eat and connect with others.

Rest really is best.