day 21: finding rest.

As Americans I think we’ve lost the art of resting. I’ve met very few people who know how to both work hard and rest well, but when I meet them I sit up and take note. Because it’s something I need to learn.

Especially in our culture of parenting it seems sometimes like rest is a sin. The way people talk these days you’d almost equate rest with not caring about your kids. Parents should be running around the house waiting on kids hand and foot. Parents should be giving kids every opportunity they deserve, every chance to live a happy life and make something of themselves. Parents should not be resting.

I think this kind of posture toward parenting is unhealthy and unbiblical and it’s harming our children. Studies show that rates of depression, suicide, and lack of motivation in kids and young adults is on the rise (Boys Adrift, Leonard Sax), so clearly our striving doesn’t guarantee happier children.

In his book Crazy Busy, Kevin Deyoung writes a very insightful chapter on parenting. He polls a number of grown kids asking their biggest regret about their parents. The overwhelming response was, “I wish my parents had been less stressed out.”

Isn’t that remarkable? Not “I wish they’d spent more time with me,” or “I wish they’d given me more stuff.” I wish they’d been less stressed.

I’ll talk a little more about parenting tomorrow, but this doesn’t just apply to parents: it applies to all of us. Our busyness and our stress affects people. I want us to think very carefully about the kind of life we’ve chosen and to ask, How is my ceaseless busyness affecting the people around me?

What am I communicating to myself and to God and to a watching world when I don’t take time to rest?

And so David and I are learning what it looks like to work hard and to rest well. This is not easy, friends. There are a hundred temptations every day that pull us away from a restful life, that clamor for attention and threaten guilt if we don’t attend to them.

But that’s just it. There will always be those temptations. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. And so the real question is, Are we going to quiet the noise and choose moments of rest today anyway?

I don’t want our kids’ memories to be of stressed out parents. I don’t want our church’s memory to be of a stressed out pastor (although that does make us feel important, doesn’t it?).

I want to define what I mean by “rest.” Rest is ceasing normal work responsibilities and making an unhurried connection with a person or an activity that energizes the body and mind.

I say “unhurried connection with a person or an activity” because my specific forms of rest will be different than yours but I think rest always involves slowing down. It involves being present in the moment. I like to sit with a book and coffee. My husband likes to be active: run, hike, build something. He’s working with his body but it allows his mind to slow down after an intense work week.

I’m learning that though I’d rather curl up with a book or my crochet, my body does sometimes need to be active in order for my mind to really rest. So I’m doing some gardening and going for walks or runs. Sometimes rest is going on a double date to a fun restaurant. Sometimes it’s  a family dance party or laying on the trampoline laughing with our kids.

Part of rest for David and me is making a priority of growing real friendships at church. They are not just “the people we minister to.” No, God has given them to us to sharpen and grow us, and also to help us relax and not take ourselves so seriously. And so we’re seeking out times where we just hang out and have fun with church friends. Where we get to know one another on a deeper level and share joy and suffering. Where they begin to ask us, “Are you making time for rest?”

My desire for you and me is for us to be free to rest, and not only to be free but to be dogged about it. My desire is for us to realize God created us to work and also to stop working sometimes and just be. My desire is for us to stop caring what others think about our saying no, our slowing down, our not being at that event, and to come to a place of peace with how God made us. My desire is for us to find rest.