Resting Purposefully

I've been away for awhile, mostly as a way to buy back some time in my life where I can ignore the go-go-go of things for a bit. Work and family and life are stressful right now, and not just because it's summer.In her weekly Substack post, Kate Bowler shared the following:

There’s something about July that makes people feel like they’re doing it wrong. If your beach days aren’t picture-perfect, if your kids whine, if your vacation gets derailed—are you even summering correctly?

This myth of summer as “freedom” is, of course, deeply American. Our calendars and our capitalism say go-go-go, and then toss us a cold beverage and call it rest.

But God's version of rest? It’s not productivity in disguise. It’s not something you earn.

God’s rest says: You are loved before you’ve done anything at all. You can stop. You are allowed to stop."

I won't pretend I stopped posting because of some holy edict. Heck, I don't even have time right now to think about whether God is real. (Yes, I get the irony of that statement.) I'm trying to rest. To do nothing but listen to an audiobook or watch the cats as they watch the birds in our screened porch. I still can't do truly nothing, but I'm trying to get close.

Hopefully I can be back in a couple weeks with book roundups or a travel log. For now, though, I rest.