We Need Rest

I wrote a post about exhaustion but have forgotten the lessons I learned about the importance of rest and legitimacy of exhaustion. 

In the post I talked about how some of David’s soldiers were exhausted and ordered to rest while others continued the fight. I was surprised that both groups were to share equally in the gain.

Recently, I have not been good about getting rest. I’ve been good about sleep. I’ve been blessed with the ability to fall into an exhausted sleep each night. But rest is more than sleep. 

Somehow we all think we are superhuman and can keep going and going and don’t need to be still and rest and take a sabbath like God instructed and Jesup demonstrated. 

All of my grieving books, my pastor and my therapist have expressed to me the importance of rest.  And yet, as a single mom, it’s hard. I realized a few weeks ago that it had been months since I’d had time away from Zoya that wasn’t work or running 5+ miles. 

Yet rest is so important. The longer I am doing things the more I think that coping can occur without rest for a time, but healing and recovery take the ability to be still. 

When living takes every ounce of your strength, just arranging for rest can be more than you can handle.  My advise for today is, if you are close to someone who is dealing with loss, don’t offer advice, don’t try to find the right words, just find a way to allow them to rest and be still. God restores. All you can do is help facilitate that. 

I’m blessed by so many frinds and family who are willing to help. People have given us cleaning service, meals, and childcare. Some of those things have allowed us to survive and more and more of those things are now allowing us to rest. I am just now at a point that I’m really realizing how much I need to focus on recovery and not trying to hold it together and keep life together as it was.  

In the last week I’ve had an extra hour at dinner with a friend without baby, two hours at home without baby, and then friends took her for four hours the other evening. I did some unplanned errands and enjoyed the freedom of not caring for an emotional toddler, but the highlight of my evening and my real goal was just to sit in my chair. 

The next day I felt like a new person; a person who had a tiny grip on truth and reality. I’ll never be able to thank everyone enough for helping us survive. We cannot do it alone. We need the Body.