If your summer is going anything like mine, you are finding yourself more and more active. Coffee dates, horseback riding, teaching, fundraising--all very enjoyable, splendid things to do, but at the end of nearly every day I find myself sun-weary and muscle sore (including the brain muscle).
When I was a kid, I was terminally afraid I was missing out. If it was at all exciting, I wanted to be a part of it. This pervasive anxiety over not doing enough or not being enough or not being where I needed to do something continued into adulthood.
Then I got sick, so sick all I could do was lounge around my parents' house. I found myself in the middle of the very nightmare that stalked me. But I learned something critical during my convalescence: even when I was doing nothing, I was still doing something. I was still breathing. I was still seeing and feeling. I was resting.
This shift in my thinking about the intentionality of rest was revolutionary. I learned to value the down time. I was no longer missing out or wasting hours of my life--I was existing at a slower pace.
Days like these, as I find myself busy (now practically a curse word in my vocabulary) again, I long for that blessed rest. So I'm trying to carve out oases of creative relaxation into my routine, to allow myself the freedom to just take the afternoon off, drive to the mountains and watch a hummingbird buzz back and forth from perch to perch.
I can't think of a better use of my time.
OneArmGirl
Then I got sick, so sick all I could do was lounge around my parents' house. I found myself in the middle of the very nightmare that stalked me. But I learned something critical during my convalescence: even when I was doing nothing, I was still doing something. I was still breathing. I was still seeing and feeling. I was resting.
This shift in my thinking about the intentionality of rest was revolutionary. I learned to value the down time. I was no longer missing out or wasting hours of my life--I was existing at a slower pace.
Days like these, as I find myself busy (now practically a curse word in my vocabulary) again, I long for that blessed rest. So I'm trying to carve out oases of creative relaxation into my routine, to allow myself the freedom to just take the afternoon off, drive to the mountains and watch a hummingbird buzz back and forth from perch to perch.
I can't think of a better use of my time.
OneArmGirl
Rest is a key ingredient we should all treasure.
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