We’ve all had this moment: your body, exhausted; you can’t imagine lifting one more muscle; your thoughts, only on your warm, comfy bed, and how good it will feel to plop down into it; how good it will feel to close your heavy lids and only dream. Then the time finally comes; you drudge your lead feet up the stairs, clunk all the way to your room, creak open the door, and fall into the vastness of pillows and blankets. You think naively to yourself “I’ll surely get a good night’s sleep now, I really deserve it.” And that’s when they start – the thoughts. Streaming into your consciousness, one after the next, after the next, after the next, next, next, next, next, over and over and over and over and over. And you darkly think how funny it is that your mind can be so restless at the time when you need rest the most.
Sometimes, it can be very difficult to find rest, to reach that state of calm, balanced serenity. This was a task I was charged with in my earlier spiritual direction sessions* – to find rest in the Lord. The idea was to change up the way I pray to allow God to work within me, to allow God to draw me in. In my praying, I was so focused on “doing” something, I felt I needed a tangible connection with God, I needed to “feel” him. But God works most within us when we are still, silent, at rest.
I would be lying if I said this was easy. In my practices of stillness, it amazes me how quickly my mind can travel on a train of thought, and other times, I take the notion literally and accidentally fall asleep while praying. I have found it difficult to even get to a place of rest. I often have to pencil God in to my busy schedule. But God doesn’t fit into an hour time slot, and praying should not be work or an exertion of mental energy; prayer IS resting. An hour of prayer can be the one part of your day where you can rest, it shouldn’t be an hour of mental frustration and criticism. God pulls us in, reels us like a fish on a line, and however long it takes to pray today is how long it needs to take – everything else can wait. That big project, that person you need to meet with, that thing you need to do – it all can wait, because nothing is more important than time with God.
Unfortunately, we as humans in a modern society have been raised in this doctrine of working to the point of breaking to be the best, striving for unrealistic perfection – as children even, we’ve been told to work hard, to get the highest test scores, to get the best scholarship, so you can get into the best college, so you can work even harder, to get even higher test scores, to become the best “whatever,” so you can work even harder, so you can pay rent and insurance, and save for retirement – then you finally retire and what do you have left to look back on except how hard you worked and how tired you are? Where was the joy? What was the point of it all? Is society telling me I have to wait until retirement until I can finally rest?
God offers us something better. God can pull us closer to Him, He can give us rest. Every day we have opportunities to find rest, to find the balance in our busy lives. God points out the joys and blessings in our lives, and leads us where to go, if we let Him – if we surrender and rest in Him. Time spent with God can give our minds that feeling of hitting the pillow and surrendering to sleep, that effortless drift to a state of peaceful, calm clarity. A life spent with God offers us so much more than any scholarship or insurance package ever can. We all deserve a rest.
“Still my heart, hold me close
Let me hear, a still small voice
Let it grow, let it rise
Into a shout, into a cry
And I am restless, I’m restless
‘Til I rest in You, let me rest in You.”
*Spiritual Direction is something all members of House of Brigid are required to do as part of our spiritual formation. We choose a person who is qualified as a Spiritual Director, and they help us work through anything we may be needing help with, and are also there to remind us of God’s work within our lives.
* https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/and-i-will-give-you-rest/5899/ – This is a really great blog post by Fr. Billy Swan of St. Aidan’s in Enniscorthy that has inspired me and given me great insight.
