Impractical Advice (Part Two)
This summer my family and I went on vacation. When I returned my friend Jenny asked me how it was. I replied, “It was great. I unplugged from everything. Turned my phone off, my computer off – I had no idea what was happening in the world.”
She admittedly looked a little perplexed and asked, “Wow, that must have been hard to turn all that stuff off. How did you do it?”
I said, “I pushed the power button.”
We have fooled ourselves into believing that unplugging, turning off media, and shutting down the noise is impossible. Therefore, we tell ourselves, it must be for someone else. This is a lie that we have chosen to believe. Busy is our normal, which ought to concern us for busyness is an addictive drug.
I have learned that if I am not on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, or if I cannot return an email or phone call the sun will go on rising and setting and everyone will be okay. As for me, I will not be just okay; I will be better.
Rest may be one of the most underrated aspects of one’s spiritual and emotional health. It’s no surprise then that it has also proven to be one of the most challenging. The most valuable things are often the most difficult to grasp.
Rest has not (and still is not) always easy for me. It is difficult at times to slow down and even harder to stop. I have found that this is often connected to what we discover when we do. When there is no phone, computer, television, music, iPad, or other distractions we are left with our very own self – our heart, our thoughts, our soul, our fears. There is no escape. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?
If you responded "yes" to that last question, your answer might help you understand why you don’t slow down. We may not want to believe this is true; so we create any number of reasons as to why we can’t rest.
We fool ourselves into thinking that we just can’t, or we are too busy, or we don’t have enough time, or we have to get this or that done. Perhaps we tell ourselves these things in an attempt to stay away from our own hearts and souls.
If this is true, then we must ask, “What am I afraid of finding in my own soul?” Answering it may help us to see the very thing(s) that scare us out of slowing down. The catch is, you have to slow down to answer the question. Which naturally leads us to another question, “When will you slow down to ask and answer the question?”