“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
My feet were heavy and my typical wandering mind was eerily still except for the whisper of “you need rest” that came to my thoughts as quickly as it went. I can’t help but laugh at this memory of me on a retreat back in February when two people prayed over my stressed out self about my post undergraduate plans and what was to come in the months to follow. “You need rest?” I thought afterwards, “that’s hilarious, God, because all of my options for post grad consist of working for the Catholic Church and well…that seems to consist of little rest at all.”
Now I can’t say that I am an expert “rester.” Quite honestly, I am terrible at resting and the past seven months have been dreadfully hard for me to figure out what “rest” even is. Coming from a loaded college schedule filled with classes, work, and extracurriculars, I had always thought that “rest” was simply my seven hours or less of sleep every night or laying around and being lazy for a day on the weekend. Little did I know back in February that there I would be, one month later, faced with my family home, a lot of stocked up toilet paper for quarantine, and a global pandemic where all I could really do was a whole lot of nothing.
Somehow in the midst of this “nothingness,” I still did not create a space for myself to fully rest. I logged onto Amazon.com, ordered myself a dry erase board and colorful markers, and made a play-by-play schedule of each and every day of the week. “I have to keep myself busy. There is still so much to be done..in this house, in this world, in friendships, in music, in exercise, in preparing for Ireland..” The lists went on and on, yet none of my endless tasks and goals ever alluded to rest…or so I thought.
“Pray the rosary today,” “pray through music today,” “participate in virtual Mass today.” These are only a few examples of some of the reminders that appeared on my dry erase board among all of my other non faith-related tasks over the last seven months. And if I’m being completely honest, they were always the last to be checked off of my list or they would be erased at the end of each week without a check mark in the boxes next to them. It took until I was feeling completely weary and burdened by the happenings in the world and in my own life when I realized that Matthew probably had a point in his Gospel.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). This passage is one that has gone in one ear and out the other during the hundreds, if not thousands, of times that I have heard it sang or spoken out loud. However, as I reflect on this passage a bit deeper this week, I begin to see “rest” in an entirely new fashion. Maybe “rest” isn’t just sleep at the end of each day or the endless hours of laying on the couch and watching Netflix. Maybe “rest” is not the laziness that I often perceived it as.
As I pray through this passage, I start to think that the Lord calling me to rest back in February didn’t mean nixing the post graduation opportunities that seemed to be “busy” to me, but that this calling was to see the action of rest in a new light. Perhaps the only way for me to see rest in a new light was to throw me into the space of a global pandemic where my old perception of “rest” seemed to be the only option at times. A space where I was forced to slow down, to not have a lot of “busy work” to do despite how many tasks I wrote on my white board, and to have an opportunity to simply be and immerse myself in the one true thing that can provide me with rest: God, Himself.
Among my endless lists each week of quarantine on that giant white board, I saw my faith and prayer life as something to be checked off, as something to keep me busy, not as something to rest in. As I look forward to the months to come, I still hear the faint whisper of “you need rest” in my mind. However, I no longer find it to be a silly, lazy, or fearful suggestion. Sure, my year with the House of Brigid will consist of tasks and duties to check off of my lists just as any job has, but it will also be the perfect opportunity to practice allowing my soul to fully rest. As I anticipate the departure from my family home to my new home in Dublin, I look forward to resting in the Lord’s gentle and humble heart alongside the entire House of Brigid and Newman University Church communities. May we all make it to Ireland soon (!!!!!!) so that we can continue to take on His yoke, learn from Him, and find rest for our souls.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
