I’m sick right now.
Not throw-up-in-the-toilet sick, but stay-at-home-don’t-talk-to-anyone type of sick. It’s the irritating scratchy feeling at the back of your throat, the clouded thinking sensation and the frustrating, never-ending congestion. I’m sick of the blocked ears and the throbbing in my head and eyes, sick of the soreness in my legs.
Ok, you’ve definitely got the picture by now, I don’t have to keep writing, turning this into a sob story. You, dear (probably non-existent) reader, are wondering why on earth this is what I write my third blog post about – 15 months after I wrote my second blog post.
The answer is that I haven’t slowed down for 15 months.
I have this habit where I just go, go, go; until I’ve run myself into the ground. I pile Obligations and commitments onto my plate so high, a Michelin-star restaurant waiter would struggle to balance it all. Then, I try to block out the voice of reason and experience, telling me that I will crash and that I need to find a place to schedule in rest. And what is the result?
I get sick.
Sometimes so bad that I’m wiped out for two weeks. This time, I noticed the symptoms coming on early and I almost handled it in time. I’d been taking extra supplements and drinking lots of tea by the time I got here. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m here, and this is not fun.
Getting sick is part of life, but when it happens regularly as a result of stress, that’s something I want to avoid. And if there’s one thing that characterises me, it’s the insatiable drive to improve my life.
So, I’ve found an improvement area. What am I going to do about it?
Earlier this year, my friend Tom had a look at my schedule and goals and asked me a very pointed question, one that I couldn’t properly answer at the time.
“These are very good and honourable goals, Tim. But what are your rest goals?”
On the spot, I kind of hurriedly threw an idea together to try to have the semblance of an answer, but I knew that wouldn’t cut it. Tom had a point – I needed to schedule in rest, otherwise burnout will come. The idea was to set aside 1 hour each week on Sundays for uninterrupted bible reading and study. Surely that would be enough, right?
According to my headache and sore throat, it wasn’t. And to start things off on the wrong foot, I didn’t do it – once. Sure, I read my bible and did some bible study, but it wasn’t uninterrupted. It wasn’t scheduled and habitual. And it wasn’t restful.
If I scheduled it, it became an ambition. But the only way to truly rest was by avoiding ambition. And it just never happened. I noticed it in my first attempted Sunday.
I cracked open my bible and immediately started planning out how I would cover the content in future Sundays, learn such-and-such material, and study this-and-that theological work.
I’m sure that these are, in Tom’s words, “good and honourable goals”, but they aren’t real rest. So, how can I learn what to do in real rest? How can I schedule it, turn it into a habit that is both supporting of my ambitions and truly recovering my spirit, soul and body?
Philippians 4:6 says:
“do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
The apostle Paul stresses gratitude as a response to anxiety, worry and concern. I’m kicking myself a little, because it seems so obvious. Gratitude is a gamechanger. When I was a kid, whenever I was grumpy, rude and unthankful, my parents would send me into my room, tell me to say out loud 10 specific things that I was grateful to God for, and then to come back.
This was no magic potion or silver bullet. But what it did was reorient my focus away from my own problems and my perspective of my circumstances and place it on God. My situation itself didn’t change just because I was grateful, but rather I was renewed afresh (often) to tackle the issue.
My issue is rest.
I think gratitude can be a form of rest. I’m going to continue with attempting to complete my uninterrupted time (I’ll have to put my phone away for that) in the Word on Sundays – but I’m going to add something in: 10 items of gratitude. This won’t be scaled. I’m not going to try to ‘beat my score’ or ‘improve my gratitude’ – rather my goal will be to write down or say out loud 10 items of gratitude.
This is almost ambition-proof. Yes, it’s an ambition, but it’s an easy one. And it’s designed to reorient my focus away from me, and onto God. It’s my attempt to truly rest, without it being hijacked by ambition.
Let’s see how I go.
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