WHY YOU NEED TO TAKE A BREAK

You may have noticed there was no True Reflections blog last week. I missed you all, but I was taking a break. I was resting. When was the last time you rested?
 
I mean really rested. For more than five minutes? When was the last time you turned off your phone, sat, gazed, breathed, and didn’t look at the clock for hours on end?
 
“When could I possibly,” you ask? I ask myself that sometimes, too—like all the times. This weekend our calendar includes dinner with friends, eleven soccer games (three of which are out of town), a graduation, church, a wedding, a visit with my mom, and a team meeting. It is physically impossible for us to get to all of these things.
But we’ll try.
And then we’ll be full and happy and connected and stimulated and… exhausted! I think for most of us in today’s world, this is a typical snapshot of a day-in-the-life.
 
And I am so grateful this is my life, because I love my friends, kids, and family. But it is impossible to maintain this kind of momentum. I didn’t even mention the fact that we should try to squeeze in eating, bathing, and sleeping somewhere in the mix. So how do we find rest in the midst of mayhem (awesome mayhem, but mayhem none the less)?

A peaceful winding trail in the mountains to help me unwind.

We have to be intentional.
We need to schedule down time just as intentionally as we plan workouts or conference calls. There are two kinds of rest that we need to make time for:

1. Breathing room—margin in our day to day, time between meetings, to sit and have conversations, to avoid driving like a maniac and being late to everything
2. Sabbath—actual time “off” to process and decompress all of the time “on”

 
Both are critical to our mental and physical wellbeing, but it is the latter that I’m talking about here. The get away from it all, put your phone away too (crazy, I know but so freeing), let your brain and all the thoughts in it, your heart rate and your body s-l-o-w down.
 
Remember, God created Sabbath. He wasn’t exhausted when He created the world, He is God, so it didn’t tax or stress Him. At all. But when He was done, God invented the day off to teach us that all good work needs to be followed by rest. God’s creation of Sabbath was just as important as His creation of land and sea, animals and plants. He knew what we sometimes forget—without rest, we can’t process all the great stuff that happens during the busy times.
 
By the seventh day God had finished his work.
On the seventh day He rested from all his work.
God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day
Because on that day he rested from his work, All the creating God had done. Genesis 2: 2-4
 
As Priscilla Shirer says in her book, Breathe, “In the midst of a universe that cannot exist for a second without constant motion, God transcended the order of nature. He stopped. He rested. And He prescribes the same for you and me.”

A beautiful mountain stream in North Carolina

My husband and I just got back from one of these brilliantly, spectacular slow downs. We escaped to my mom’s place in the mountains for a couple of days while my incredible mother stayed with our kiddos. In the mountains it’s next to impossible to get a signal. There’s no cable. There’s not even a coffee shop (don’t panic, we packed our Nespresso). However there are breath-taking mountains, a still lake, winding walking trails, the sound of birds singing, and Brett and I had each other. We spent our time walking and talking, sharing, reading the Bible, watching Nicholas Sparks movies, cooking delicious food, listening to a great sermon series, and just staring out at the view.
 
And in this time and space my husband and I exhaled. Together, we exchanged stories that in our whirl and swirl of daily life had never surfaced. We shared hopes and aspirations. We listened to and worked out each other’s issues, stresses, concerns. And we took time by ourselves, too. I journaled about where I’ve been this past year and where I’m headed. I made plans, jotted down goals, dreamed.
 
Amazingly, when my life wasn’t so noisy—and I just don’t mean actual noise, but the noise of busyness and distraction—I could hear more clearly. I could hear my husband more crisply. Without the clutter in my brain, I could hear God’s voice reminding me how much He loves me, how much peace He offers, how He’s got my life safely guarded in His hands. When I’m too busy, it’s harder to find time to hear His voice. But in the stillness it surrounded me. And it reminded me of my true reflection, that I am a daughter of Christ.
 
It’s summertime folks. And that can mean trips and camps and conferences and getting caught up on all the things we don’t get to during the other parts of the year. But it is also a time where it may be easier to carve out some space to just be. Whether you take one personal day or a handful of vacation days, I urge you to find a beautiful spot—a rooftop, a dock, a field of wildflowers, a beach, a park bench with a peaceful view—and sit and unplug and rest and unwind and breathe and listen. Take time off. You don't just deserve it. You need it. It's part of what God created you to do. And if you're worried about what will happen to all of the items on your to do list while you're taking time off, I promise, God has them under control. He's got you covered. I also promise you will not regret resting.
 
Do you have any plans to unwind this summer? I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below.