Green Pastures

 Today is Sunday, the day when our modern western culture supposedly observes the Sabbath, so it seems like a good day to talk about rest.

Rest has been on my mind a lot since my "vacation". Partly because I was very concerned about getting it, partially because I did my annual summer reading of "Teaching from Rest" by Sarah Mackenzie, and partly because I amped up to my regular work schedule after my week off and by some miracle I felt strangely.... rested.

Life is crazy during these middle years with the kids. We are always going in a million different directions. They stay up very late, and I get up very early to fit in work. But the past couple of years the weekends have finally become a time when some days I can get up slowly. Read my Bible and drink my coffee with only minimal distractions, and the main battle is just to keep my mind from racing to the details of my day that I need to prioritize. And today when I opened my Bible in the quiet of the kid's bedroom where I was hiding (because it is just too darn hot to be outside where I prefer), I found myself searching for rest.

Rest is a physical and cognitive choice. Rest is worship. It is admitting to ourselves: "I am not God". It is choosing to do something different with our time. 

For me, rest doesn't usually mean sitting still. I am not super good at that. God made me for movement, and I worship best in nature while moving. I worship God as I go about my day-to-day work. But in rest, I worship best playing in the ocean with my kids or catching a wave myself, admiring the dolphins on the horizon, pulling weeds in the garden. I like hacking at those weeds with a pickaxe. It's not work to me even when my skin starts tearing off.

Every week I take 2 of the kids 30 minutes away to a place that feels thousands of miles away from the rest of our lives. A place with green grass and pine trees as far as you can see and 63 horses and several dogs and some wild barn cats with occasional kittens and a chicken named Margaret, and a turkey named Turkey and people who live very different lives than we do. 

I look forward to it just as much as they do, and since it is my 2 kids who are probably the most adventurous, excitable and likely to find different interests, I try to treasure each visit knowing that this time in our lives will not last forever. In the close to 2 hours that we are there every week, I completely forget about regular life. It takes too much concentration to remember how to do all the things I am still learning how to do and only get to practice once a week.... putting on the halter, brushing their manes and tails and all the sand off their bodies, tightening the girth, putting everything where it needs to go and facing the right way. My youngest is still too little to be able to do all those things herself, and her instructor, a couple weeks ago as she watched me take the boots off one of the horses before we washed him said "I feel like you are learning as much as your daughter!" and I felt a surge of genuine happiness when I told her how much I love to be there. My short-attention-spanned animal loving son has not been riding as long as my youngest and was hooked as soon as I dragged him out there to the stable to see it. He has never found a sport he really liked and has always gotten frustrated and confused when coaches give him instructions, but his adoration for the animals has overcome that, and he has taken patiently the barking orders and impatience over his lack of knowledge from his instructor. He can now not only prep the horse almost by himself, but he is really starting to get the hang of the riding part. And he always seems refreshed when he leaves.

"He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters."

Psalm 23:2-3

When I think about how God is happy when I rest, when I take pleasure in a gift He has given instead of striving for more, I am overwhelmed with the knowledge that I am loved. And what could be more restful than that?

Rest is a choice. Rest is "work" sometimes. And ultimately rest is something inside of us. It is knowing, as we head into the work week, a new public school (for my daughter) and homeschool (for my sons) year, more home renovations and a child's surgery that it is not all on us. That we can take the time to hide in a bedroom as long as no one is burning the house down. Peel off time in the schedule to drive 30 minutes away for a sweaty, dirty and exhilarating hobby that we all enjoy. Host a last-minute teenage bonfire that runs later in the night than you might anticipate. But even more so, rest is stopping in the middle of the chaos to remind ourselves we are not so big. Rest is tackling the endless list of tasks without obsessing about the outcome. It is a quiet rock where our hearts can go to escape the storm around us. 

"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

Psalm 34:8