This is Day 14 of the Write 31 Days challenge, but only my 9th post in my 31 Days of Rest & Replenishment series due to technical difficulties (my router died. It took me a few days to figure out what was wrong and a few more days to replace it). So, here I am again. I'm incredibly frustrated I wasn't able to post every day. I did try to continue to write on the subject of rest in my journal hoping to have some "make up posts" to share once I was back online but today I've decided to just pick up where I left off here because...rest.
I became a parent six years ago and I have been feeling guilty ever since. Sometimes it's probably ridiculous, other times it's probably an appropriate response to a bad choice. Either way, guilt comes easy for a parent, doesn't it?
For a long time I felt especially guilty spending time for myself. Doing anything for myself while something else was left undone felt really wrong. After all, these little ones need me. Also, to be honest, rest sounds lazy in a world that holds busyness and productivity in high esteem. But the simple reality is that there are more demands than I am humanly capable of meeting. So what's one to do with all this? Let things go and feel guilty about every break that is taken? I tried that. Or maybe never take time to rest and replenish and simply plow ahead until you crash? I tried that, too. It was all very ugly.
Then I read an illustration in Replenish (by Lisa Grace Byrne) that helped me make sense of it all and put my guilt to rest...
For a long time I felt especially guilty spending time for myself. Doing anything for myself while something else was left undone felt really wrong. After all, these little ones need me. Also, to be honest, rest sounds lazy in a world that holds busyness and productivity in high esteem. But the simple reality is that there are more demands than I am humanly capable of meeting. So what's one to do with all this? Let things go and feel guilty about every break that is taken? I tried that. Or maybe never take time to rest and replenish and simply plow ahead until you crash? I tried that, too. It was all very ugly.
Then I read an illustration in Replenish (by Lisa Grace Byrne) that helped me make sense of it all and put my guilt to rest...
Byrne describes the connection between the demands of life and our need for self care like a simple wooden fence - the vertical posts are habits and practices to meet our basic needs (what she calls our "seven core essentials"), and the horizontal posts are the relationships, responsibilities, to-do lists that make up our life. The heavier the horizontal posts become, the closer the vertical posts need to be. It makes sense if you're building a fence. It makes sense if you're living a life that is holding up responsibilities.
When life gets heavy I often think "I'm going to need a nice long vacation after this!" but perhaps it's better to take special care during those "heavy" times to work in small daily practices that will keep me healthy, rested and replenished.
That's what this series on rest is really about - the month of October is a challenging one for me, and being mindful about rest and replenishment is helping me keep from crumbling under the weight of this demanding season in life.
When life gets heavy I often think "I'm going to need a nice long vacation after this!" but perhaps it's better to take special care during those "heavy" times to work in small daily practices that will keep me healthy, rested and replenished.
That's what this series on rest is really about - the month of October is a challenging one for me, and being mindful about rest and replenishment is helping me keep from crumbling under the weight of this demanding season in life.