026: Forced Rest

March 13, 2010
Psalm 23, Psalm 91

I’m sitting in bed, under a pile of blankets, in my favorite sweatshirt and pair of sweats. I’m sick. As a person who rarely gets sick, I do not like this. It’s just plain annoying to have your body betray you in this manner: the snot factory jumps into overdrive, your tear ducts suddenly become hyper efficient, and every joint and muscle in your body protest the slightest of movements. This state of being is not very fun at all.

I looked up the word “rest” on dictionary.com a few moments ago. It says, “Rest: 1 – the refreshing quiet or repose of sleep; 2 – refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion or labor; 3 – relief or freedom, esp. from anything that wearies, troubles, or disturbs; 4 – a period or interval of inactivity, repose, solitude, or tranquility; 5 – mental or spiritual calm; tranquility; 6 – cessation or absence of motion.”

Because I’m a nerd, I also looked “rest” up on thesaurus.com. These were my favorites: “break, breather, calm, comfort, downtime, halt, hush, interlude, intermission, lull, pause, peace, quiet, recreation, refreshment, relief, silence, stay, stillness, stop, tranquility.”

I’m not very good at resting. I can be lazy, on occasion, but it’s not my favorite, and I’m really not sure it’s the same as “rest.” I try to strike a balance of sorts of taking naps and/or sleeping in on the weekends when my nightly sleep gets minimized, but that probably isn’t really cutting it for me. The last 10 weeks – Winter Quarter on my teaching schedule – have been pretty much insane. My alarm goes off at 5:30AM, I’m out the door by 6:30 or 6:45AM, and I usually don’t walk through my front door until 10PM, if not later. I have breaks during the day, but I usually cram coffee dates into that time, or grade papers, or occasionally go for a run… And even when I do take a nap in my car, my brain has a hard time slowing down.

I think my body might be sending me a not-so-subtle message that I need to rest. I need to find refreshment and relief from not only a demanding schedule, but also the mental exertions of letting my brain go into hyperanalytical mode. It frequently does that, and I rarely do anything to stop it. Sometimes it’ll take me two hours at night to get my mind to slow down enough to actually sleep, and I regularly wake up multiple times during the night from bazaar, over-stimulating dreams.

At a wedding reception tonight I talked to my friend, Uncle Greg, and he asked me if I was “resting in the Lord.” I was honest and told him, “No, I’m really not.” I don’t know what that means, exactly, on a heart, applied-to-me level. I can think through what it must mean, and imagine what it would be like, but I know that part of the reason I’m so exhausted (and thus my body is rebelling against the status quo) is because I don’t rest. Not properly, not in a soul way.

I need to learn how to do that. I’ll probably spend the next couple days looking and thinking about what the Bible has to say about resting, and how I can start applying that to me. How are you at resting? Do you need to be better at it?