I used to treat rest like dessert. Something I could have once the plate was clean. Once the emails were answered, the house was in order, the kids were settled, the ministry task was done, the business was caught up. The problem is that the plate was never clean. So I never rested. I just collapsed, which is not the same thing.

Collapse is what happens when your body overrides your schedule. Rest is what happens when you choose it on purpose. One leaves you empty and ashamed. The other leaves you restored. Most of the women I know, myself included, have mastered collapse and never learned rest.

Rest was God's idea before it was your problem

Here is what finally shifted it for me. God rested on the seventh day. Not because He was tired. He was not. He rested to establish a rhythm and to declare that the work was good enough to pause. Then He commanded His people to do the same, and He placed that command right next to do not murder and do not steal. Rest was never a suggestion for the weak. It was a boundary for the beloved.

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for He grants sleep to those He loves.Psalm 127:2

Read that again slowly. Sleep is something He grants to those He loves. If you have been refusing it, you have been refusing a gift.

Why we fight it

For a lot of us, rest feels unsafe. If you grew up being valued for what you produced, stillness can feel like disappearing. If you have been the strong one in every room, sitting down feels like letting people fall. And if anxiety is part of your story, rest is when the thoughts get loud, so motion becomes the hiding place.

None of those reasons are silly. They are real, and they are worth naming. But they are also lies about your worth, and lies do not get to run your calendar.

Three ways to actually rest this week

  1. Pick one hour and protect it like an appointment. Put it on your calendar. Tell your people. During that hour, do nothing that produces anything. No folding, no scrolling, no list making. Sit outside. Take a bath. Lie on the floor if you want to. Let the hour be useless on purpose.
  2. Finish the day before the day is finished. Choose a time when work stops, even if the work is not done. The work is never done. Stopping anyway is the whole practice.
  3. Rest with God, not just from work. Ten quiet minutes with your Bible open and no agenda. You do not have to study anything. Just be in the room with Him. That is rest for the soul, and the soul is what is actually tired.

Sit with this

Finish this sentence honestly: I will finally rest when ______. Now look at what you wrote. Is that a real finish line, or a moving one? What would it look like to rest before that sentence comes true?

The Grounded Girl workbook has a full section on building rhythms that hold you when life does not slow down. If rest keeps losing to everything else, that is a good place to begin.

With you on the journey,
Autumn