I've continued to receive a torrent (well, okay, a trickle) of e-mails in response to my article on Christianitytoday.com's building church leader's web site.
I got an e-mail yesterday from a woman at Chowan College in Murfreesboro, NC. She rattled off her lengthy list of commitments and resume-building accomplishments and confessed that she was so addicted to doing that at this point it was easier for her to work herself to the ground than it was for her to rest. She's so fearful of not getting into graduate school that she's driven into insane busy-ness.
Fear is a poweful motivator, but it doesn't last too long. Most of our busy-ness is about control, which at its' core is about fear: if I don't take control of my life, the situations around me, then I'll be a victim or things won't turn out quite the way I want them to. Fear that breeds control-freakness yields the fruit of burn-out and exhaustion.
This is why rest is such a powerful spiritual discipline. It breaks the power of fear and the illusion of control. It IS work to rest, a good work that God invites us into to free us from fear that leads to control-freakishness that robs our lives of the true joy of work as it was meant to be.
One other e-mail I got was from Marc in the Netherlands (which is cool in and of itself but even cooler because my grandparents came over from the Netherlands after World War 2). He commented that it was easier for him to have genuine rest when his life is structured and there's a clear sense of work and rest. I see this with myself and students all the time. Christmas break ends up being four weeks wasted--neither productive nor genuinely restful. Summer is more like twelve weeks of wasteland.
Structure can be a control-freak thing to do, but it can also bless us if we allow it to play it's part in our lives. For me, building structure into my life with healthy habits of rest (even when I don't necessarily 'have to' like when I'm on vacation) helps me to come away refreshed. When I go to the beach and do nothing but lazy around for five days, I often come back unmotivated and sluggish. When I decide to go to bed at a decent time, get up at a decent time, and build in time with the Lord, I come back much more renewed.
1 comment:
thanks, dabney. i definitely agree that having some structure to our times of rest can be really freeing. again, some of this depends on personality and wiring, but on the whole i think it's a helpful way to think about engaging rest more deliberately and intentionally--without getting too worked up over it!
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