Rest For Your Souls

I spent at least a year of my life in that horrible in between sleep and awake state. My sweet girl was a terrible sleeper, despite my best efforts, and I lived on that edge between sleep deprivation and barely holding it all together.

My brain started to short circuit and most adult conversations involved me pretending to listen while I blankly stared at the other person. 

I was exhausted. That kind of exhausted where you leave your coffee on the hood of your car and forget to strap your infant into the carseat...not that I've EVER done that.

Eventually we made it through the sleep-barren desert of infanthood and my little girl began to sleep more than three hours at a stretch. Sleep is glorious. Uninterrupted sleep is the stuff of fairy tales and happily ever afters. Forget Prince Charming because he'll only keep you awake {snort}.

Are you with me mamas?

If there is anything I learned during that first sleepless year with my daughter is that rest is necessary. During that season of my life it was sleep that I was deprived of, but what I recognized I needed more than sleep is rest.

Rest isn't only sleep. Sleep is a part but it is truly so much more. Rest is stillness. Rest is clearing our schedules of the should do's and creating space to breathe full breaths that clear the mind and cleanse the soul.

Rest is intentional focusing our mind on quiet so that we can focus on what matters, hear Jesus speak to us without the whirring noise of our to-dos buzzing in our ear.

Rest is Biblical. Rest is necessary.

Rest is complicated for us mamas, but it is so worth the struggle to find it.

It's 1:00 in the afternoon and I wrestle my toddler into her bed for naptime. Naptime. The time of the day when all mamas do a collective sigh. What follows that sigh for me is usually a frustrated look around my less than immaculate house or at my burgeoning to-do list.

My to-do list taunts me from the kitchen counter. 

Some days I am able to mark through each line and tackle the scribbled list into submission. Other days {confession time} I cower under the dining room table and mindlessly poke around facebook until I hear my daughter waking from her nap. On occasion exhaustion takes over and I squeak in a twenty minute power nap.

What I am saying is that I waste a lot of time, but often still feel exhausted, spiritually malnourished and behind the curve on everything. Can you relate?

“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.” Matthew 11:28

I've heard that passage of Scripture hundreds of times. As a mama I am tempted to give the Word of God a big eye roll when it comes to rest. Yeah, I get it. Jesus will give me rest. But has He seen my to-do list?

The answer is "Yes." He has seen my to-do list and He's still beckoning me to come away with Him and find rest. He believes it to be possible and I should too.

He says "rest for your souls." in that passage. Not just sleep mama-friends. Not just a couple hour break from the kiddos. It sounds to me like He is offering a calm breeze and a hammock for our spirits to rest and be held in. I need that. I need as much of that as I can get. 

Sometimes I am the one that makes it impossible. I fill my to-do list with the noise of busyness until I can't hear the voice of my Savior. Rest is about quieting the static of life so that we can hear the voice of God gentle and kind, often much kinder than we are to ourselves as women.

We're going to journey together for the next six weeks and I hope you'll allow God to quiet your soul and draw you close so that you can experience the real, true rest of Jesus.

Q:What gets in the way of rest for you?