I’m excited to welcome my dear friend Tara Vinson as a guest blogger today! 
Tara and I met while our family was stationed at Fort Campbell. She is a pastor’s wife and mama of three beautiful girls!
Tara is continuing our series about rest – what it means and what it looks like in her own life.
I hope you are enjoying this series and walk away with practical tips to implement in your own life!
Knowing I need to rest and actually doing it are two totally different things. It can be as elusive as knowing I need to eat better or exercise more without doing what I need to do to make it happen.
Then, often inside my brain, when I try to rest finding it can be just as challenging and elusive. Like the insomniac being able to find sleep, dealing with the inner monologue of my constantly striving brain can keep me from finding the rest I need.
Like Stephanie has written, “resting” is commanded. God designed us to need rest -so we should have faith that He can handle things -all things- and be able to rest in Him. Saying it and knowing it is one thing . . . Being able to do it, to have the faith required to rest, is something else entirely.
If you were to drop by on Sunday afternoon, you would find us all in the middle of an activity the we have entitled “Sunday Siesta.” Everyone one of us would be found in a horizontal position. There may or may not be snoring, but each of us has our own space and the house is most definitely quiet.
As my husband is in the ministry, Sunday is very much a work day. We try to protect a couple of hours of our Sunday afternoons for this time of rest, but if I am being totally honest, most Sundays my siesta isn’t very restful.
I am dealing with my inner voice listing all the things that need to be done around the house that I didn’t get to the day before. Then I start compiling the list of all that needs to be done that evening to prep for another busy week running from commitment to commitment. And I can’t forget the meal prep and grocery list that has come to resemble the never-ending task of doing laundry for 5 people.
I may be laying down and even snuggled under a fleece blanket of my choosing, but the bombardment of all the things I “should” be doing makes evasive the rest I so desperately need.
Then there are my expectations. Most of those I have put on myself. The other expectations I wrestle, I have unintentionally allowed other people to place on my shoulders. They shape the things I feel like I should be doing. They motivate my planning and shape my hopes. Expectations are incredibly heavy. . .
Too often my expectations seem to be married to my own comparisons. You know when I feel lousy about myself because “she” seems to have it all together. These comparisons keep me striving to measure up to some illusion of perfection that keeps evaporating before my eyes like a desert mirage. Looking to my right and left keep me busy judging and condemning or coveting and discontent.
Where’s the gratitude? The contentment? The peace?
The rest?
I can’t say that I have found the perfect formula to keep my Sunday Siesta from becoming a legalistic check-mark on my weekly to-do list. However, in the last year or so really I have found that rest can be found not just on a Sunday afternoon – but throughout the crazy, busy weeks of real life.
I am not “New Age” and I don’t support the idea of traditional meditation, inward focusing for the achievement of inner peace and a state of tranquility – but I believe will all my heart that rest can be found and achieved and kept in Christ.
When I am intentional to be in His Word and focus my heart upon the gospel – I experience rest and all the benefits that come along with it.
Don’t get me wrong. It is a struggle. It is NOT simple.
The voice in my head does not simply turn off when I open my Bible or begin to pray. In fact, sometimes, many times, it gets louder, screaming even for my attention.
Yet with a steady diet of Bible study, my faith grows and then so does my ability to rest.
I can combat those comparisons with the truth I read this morning that tells me how much God loves me and how He created ME with purpose and intentionality. I am not supposed to be like so-and-so. Plus, He will gently point out that it is by His grace alone that I am where I am in my relationship with Him. Who am I to judge someone else?
Through studying the truth of His Word, I am reminded that He is powerful and capable. My worries are minor to Him. He is already in tomorrow and the next day and the next week. He speaks to my soul, gently reassuring me that the things that really count will be accomplished and I should hold “my” plans loosely so He can work in and through me for my good by His good pleasure and for His glory.
He gently asks me “Who is judging the cleanliness of your floors? Or how balanced your kids’ breakfasts are?” His Word shows me what He has deemed important and tells me the things that He says I should be doing or not doing.
His Word is powerful (Romans 1:16-17) and productive (2 Timothy 3:16-17) . His Word, like manna, is the daily diet we need (Deuteronomy 8:3).
I knew these truths in my head. BUT the voice in my head told me that I was too busy to be in the Word. The voice also stroked my prideful ego and tried to tell me that I knew enough of God’s Word and I didn’t really need it. The voice told me I could do it on my own.
I found myself more weary and tired. The full life that Christ came and died to give me became a facade I was trying desperately to hold up. As a minister’s wife, a church preschool director and a “good” Christian, I felt the heavy expectations that I had to. I was allowing Satan to steal and destroy the rest I needed, that I was commanded to have.
It is easy for me to still give Satan that power to tempt me into doubting God’s Word. Now weariness and worry become my indicators that I am not resting. A quick evaluation will point out to me that I am not focusing on the Word. (Note: I can be “in” the Word and reading it, but not truly believing it or applying it!)
In Psalms, it says that He is my hiding place and my shield, that my hope is in His Word. (Ps. 119:114) When the battle is heavy, I can hide in Him and find my protection there because I know His Word is true. His Word tells me that He will finish what He has started and there will be a time when I don’t have to struggle to rest. It WILL come super-naturally for me.
Today, as I type this, it is Sunday. I got up real early to have some rest time in the Word, to focus on God. The sun has quietly risen and my heart is now ready to worship with my church family. After teaching Sunday school and listening to my husband preach I will feed my children lunch and we will have Sunday Siesta.
Tomorrow morning, as the sun, Lord-willing, again rises, I will meet with Him again to rest before the chaos of a new school/work/home week begins.
On and through both of these days I will ask Him to help me seek His face and His will -because His word tells me too. It also assures me that He will listen and He will answer. He will grow my faith and show me how His Word applies.
My hope for rest is in His Word. It is there I find who He is and who I am to Him. My strivings cease. My worries fade. I am rejuvenated and renewed. I rest.