Rest. Oh, that elusive thing that of which I never seem to have enough, and of which when I have it, I always want more. And to be fair, sometimes when I have a chance to rest, I don't take it, but choose to work instead. But God. God created rest, and he said it's good for us. Guess what? Science proves it. Go figure.I continue to learn more about rest as God impresses the need for it on my heart. For example, there's the walkie talk analogy Dr. Becky Kennedy (2024) shared on her Good Inside podcast with Laura Mae Martin. When you're productive, you're holding down the walkie talkie button. To hear anything back, you have to let go. "That's how they work," she says. And so it is with God, with intuition. When I'm busy, busy, busy, I don't hear from God. I get out of tune with my body. I don't know what I would want or need if I could rest. I have to really stop and pause, and linger in order to tune in, in order to hear. Oh, how I didn't like to hear this, and oh, how I needed to hear it!
Later in the podcast, Laura Mae Martin talked about babies and music. She reported that her baby's music teacher said that babies don't hear music when it is playing. They hear it when it stops. Might that be true of life? That we don't "hear the music"/see the good unless we actually stop and get quiet? This thought convicts me.
As I continue my running life, I realize more and more the importance of rest days. Yes, some days I want to go out and run more, but then I remember the bigger workout on the calendar tomorrow. I must rest today to have energy for that tomorrow.
Rest days are crucial not only for saving energy, but for gaining fitness. Exercise breaks the body down. On rest days, the body rebuilds. As Amanda Brooks and Laura Norris (2023) say in Tread Lightly, "When you're resting, that's where your body can actually then really take in all of the work and like slingshot you forward." Hmm. I guess I really can do too much work and get to a place that I can't recover from it.
I do not think that rest will ever necessarily come easy to me, because laziness is not rest, and I think I, as a human, tend to swing towards extremes. Understanding more about rest and its purposes, though, convict me to pursue it, motivate me to find pockets for it. May it continue to benefit me in all the ways that God intends, the above of which I am sure are far from the whole of what He intends for this good gift. After all, He originated it. He was the one who rested on the Sabbath and insisted that the ground lie fallow once a year every seven years. It should not come as a surprise that He, the Creator of the Earth, knew the science of why rest would benefit it!
References:
Brooks, A., & Norris, L. Hosts. (2023, June 16). How to run faster! (No. 19). [Audio podcast episode. In Tread Lightly. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tread-lightly-podca/episodes/Episode-19-How-to-Run-Faster-e25d9k6
Kennedy, B. (Host). (2024, August 19). There's power in setting boundaries. (No. 166). [Audio podcast episode]. In Good Inside with Dr. Becky. https://www.goodinside.com/podcast/8939/theres-power-in-setting-boundaries/
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