Summer is coming to an end. It’s not a horrible feat for most of us — yes, school is starting back and social schedules are busier. In just a month we’ll be swept into a season of successive holidays and events — but there’s admittedly a relief that comes with getting back in the swing of things. Especially after these years of self-sequestering paranoia, everyone seems a bit more eager to enjoy the excitement of the busy season.

The fresh start feel of August and September honestly make them some of my favorite months. Nothing is as refreshing as getting back on task, goal-focused, and with some form of a schedule! That being said, this year is going to be different…

For me, this year is a slow year — some would call it a gap year. I’m finishing the last minor classes before graduation but the patron of my time will be work. In a way it is going to be liberating — I won’t have as many aggressive lessons and study sessions to worry about. On the other hand, my work and social schedule fills up quickly so I know I won’t miss the lessons. Every spare moment is spent building my career; serving other people by providing my skills. I couldn’t be more excited about this year — but every fall is another chance to dare myself to toss as many items on my schedule as I possibly can. The weight piles up faster than I think, resulting in a physical and mental breakdown that has become almost annual.

This spring I had a wake up call from a long accumulation of bad habits — a rude awakening to just how much rest I have missed. I had just finished work on a novel and another novella. My lessons were going well and my social life was unrelentingly busy — in short, I was a happy girl. I read my Bible every morning and started out my day before the sun rose, feeling like I was living my life to the fullest. But few days into a combination of working out, staying up late, and studying like crazy I blacked out at work and ended up in the emergency room. My body had started shaking uncontrollably and my vision blurred for just a few minutes — unsettling signs of what at first appeared to be a seizure. The initial scare wore off in a matter of fifteen minutes in which I sat drinking water as the nurses ran tests to find the source of the shaking.

The good news is that everything came back just fine — there was nothing uncommonly wrong with my body. What caused the black-out was something that, at the time, sounded even more formidable — my heart rate had escalated and dropped like a roller coaster because of months worth of sleep deprivation and bad caffeine consumption habits.

I had two more episodes the following week, each one worse than the last — each one confirming the final verdict we have hesitantly named anxiety. After the episodes it was clear that a recovery would be necessary but simple. All I had to do was change virtually everything about my daily routine.

 As you can likely imagine, juggling all of my tasks became more difficult at best when I had find more times of rest. It was frustrating to me at first — after all, I had been resting, hadn’t I? At least once, often twice a day I made plans to take a break from my work and study to meet at a coffee shop with a friend. Other than that I liked to wake up early and read for a few hours before my day started and it wasn’t odd to find me skipping a task to sit down and write to just breathe. Though I was informally diagnosed with ‘situational anxiety,’ still there was nothing in particular that made me anxious. I was happy to be busy. The intense (though short) periods of brain dysfunction just didn’t make sense.

A week later when I had the worst episode yet, a nurse and good family friend of ours graciously walked through my symptoms on the phone. I answered her questions as she filled out her forms, after which she addressed me calmly. “Ally, it sounds like you are afraid of not constantly doing something. What do you gravitate toward when you literally have nothing to do?” I didn’t know what to say. Writing. Reading. Catching up with my friends. Following political events. Was any of that a sufficient answer?

“Mmhmm.” Her patient voice answered over the phone multiple times to my blabber. I finally ceased, defeated. She dropped a heartbreaking truth on me more gracefully than I have ever experienced. It hurt but I couldn’t ignore it's truth. “So I know you spend time in God’s Word, but are you truly seeking Him? When you are anxious — or when you ‘don’t have anything to do,’ — do you ever sit down and pray or thank God for what he has done?”

I stuttered over the phone for a while, filling the silence with excuses before the truth bubbled out. No. I hadn’t. In a free moment I’d been working on just the opposite — improving my own skills, my own relationships, chasing my own passions before ever stopping to thank God for the ability to do so. I didn’t come to Him with my worries either. In short, my prayers had become lists of things to thank God for and things for which to ask Him — a textbook form of prayer but the perfect recipe for detaching myself from Him personally. In my effort to build skills to support my lifestyle and relationships to fill my free time, I had blown my relationship with God into near oblivion. 

Passing the doorframe of your house every day doesn’t give you a relationship with your house. Feeding your dog every day, nodding at a person when you walk in a building, smiling at the mail man when he delivers your two-day shipping package doesn’t give you a relationship with any of those beings. Yet that is how I had treated God, like a routine to fulfill every morning, like a doorframe to tap every time I passed it. 

If there is one thing I have been reminded of repeatedly in the last few months, it is that relationships don’t come easily. Sure, at first they may be all fun and games, but it takes weekly, and sometimes daily commitment to establish friendships worth having in this life. With my friends it's been a somewhat gentler learning curve — I get into a routine of seeing them that requires little effort on my part. But that’s just it. Even consistent relationships — when wholly built on routine — can only reach a certain extent. For those relationships to grow, it takes intention and sometimes arduous effort. The truth is, for any task, our proficiency cannot grow when all that we do is contained in a set routine. 

Bible reading plans are great. Daily prayer times are good reminders. But when it comes to having a relationship with God? That is only the beginning. Spontaneity isn’t required — but constant willingness to stop what we are doing serve is.

Some relationships aren’t just something we do — they shape who we are. With He who loves us more than anyone, isn’t that what we desire? Who wouldn’t want their life down to their very daily demeanor to be shaped by the most powerful being on earth? For the one who created the universe to influence their every move, using that same power? It’s a selfish way to think about something far more powerful, far more valuable — that we can accept as a free gift. Not only are we promised wisdom, discernment, and strength when we seek Him first — but stability, patience, and rest also make that list. 

There are some people in this world who give me uncanny relief. When I was having my first episode, my Dad found me shaking and it was his voice that made me stop. When I am worried about going on stage for a play, my purple haired friend knows how to calm my nerves without even trying. Some have such an effect that just seeing their words come across my screen is comforting — how much more can we reap that comfort from a God who created the world and knows our deepest darkest secrets but still chooses to love us relentlessly? I am sitting on a porch in the mountains right now, looking over a towering mountain thats sound is a gentle whisper. It is hot but the breeze that has the power to flatten this shack I am staying in into a pancake is gently brushing by softly coming in the open door. What better way to illustrate God’s love for us? He doesn’t need us to fulfill his work. He is under no obligation to forgive us, nor let us live. But He chose to use the very force he used to create us and the power he could use to destroy us to be our savior. That is some amazing love. It doesn’t feel so bad to go out of my routine to thank Him, to reap his rest when He offers it, and to seek Him when I think about it like that.

God says many times in His Word that we are to seek Him. Immediately what follows is the phrase “I will give you rest.” Not the other way around. We can’t neglect giving our burdens over to God and expect to find rest, nor can we seek Him and expect to do everything through our own power. Seeking comes first — the intentional step to ask for His help. To some it may seem cruel — instead of swooping in to give us rest at the right time, no questions asked, like an automatic switch that senses our patience wavering — He makes us ask Him? He makes us decide that we need Him before He forces His aid on us? Yes. And it is beautiful — an age-old gift valid since the Garden of Eden. He lets us choose Him. We have free will to ask Him for help. His promise isn’t relief — it’s something better. It’s peace that even if there isn’t relief, even if rest seems impossible and there really is no way to work it in, He has overcome the world.

Does that mean we shouldn’t try to find moments of rest? Absolutely not. Often, times of intentional rest are ones God uses to lead us back to Him — they are an obedient answer to His call. But the beautiful thing is this: the Word doesn’t teach “make times of rest and I will give you rest” or “work a nap into your schedule every day and I will give you rest.” Trust is all He asks for and He gives something even deeper — a rest that passes all understanding.

In the end, I have learned the hard lesson that I cannot fill up my schedule with work and hobbies and social commitments to ensure I am always occupied, always improving. It isn’t healthy and it isn't Biblical— and it ends up hurting my own body and my relationships much more than it helps them. I have made changes over recent months to set a more realistic standard that conforms to the truth that is this: above all, we are to seek His will, His kingdom. 

Though even our bodies may (and will) fail, his promise of rest is certain and it is found at the end goal — the finish line of this race we constantly run: His Kingdom. I don’t have a schedule for you, a cheat sheet to use to fix all of your problems with exhaustion and stress. Such a ‘sheet’ or “five step plan” doesn’t exist — but such a person does. Through intentional seeking, we can know Him. It is the greatest gift — one that we can only enjoy if we choose to accept it willingly.

In the busy months that likely approach you, I encourage you to rest. Find times to just wind down, because God knows we need breaks from the constant mental-strain of modern daily life. But before seeking times of rest — or work, or social life, or anything else — I encourage you to seek Him. Anything that you need (or think you need) can be found in Him, His Kingdom, His will. If you seek Him daily, you may find what I have found in my limited but devoted experience — He can give amazing, wonderful opportunities that you never imagined you would have. 

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6:33‬ ‭‬‬

©Goodstrong Words 2022