Rest & Reset: Making Space
I’m going to confess something I’m a bit embarrassed about.
I know it’s the new year and we’re supposed to have all this energy for a fresh start. But I have spent the better part of the last several weeks mostly sitting. Sitting at a desk doing work, sitting on a couch watching TV, sitting up in bed reading. For someone who values movement as an integral part of my day, admitting this isn’t easy.
I didn’t have a choice, at first. I threw my back out mid-December and had trouble walking for a week or so. But even as I regained mobility, I found myself…. just done. Depleted. I love all the things that December brings: Christmas, Nutcracker ballet, holiday cheer, time with family, but I just wanted relief from all of it. So once the rush of Christmas was over, I sat at home, and did very little.
And if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t miss the things I knew I was supposed to miss. I didn’t miss ballet, I didn’t miss church work, I didn’t even miss my family as much as I thought I would. My husband and I binge-watched Bridgerton, baked a lot of Christmas cookies, I read a couple of mindless romance novels… and it was wonderful. For the first time in a long time, I actually rested.
And a funny thing happened. Once I gave into actually resting - true, active resting (more on that in a minute) - I started to make space for myself to reset. I started making space for renewal. I started making space for my depleted energy reserves to fill up again.
There’s an important distinction between what I call “active rest” and “passive rest.” You feel it in the “I want to…” vs. the “I don’t wanna.” In intention vs. resistance. Active rest is when you let yourself rest with intention, joy, and purpose (“I can’t wait til my day off when I can binge-watch this new hit show everyone’s talking about!”). Passive rest is when you binge-watch that new hit show because you don’t wanna do the dishes and the laundry and answer all those emails and pay those bills and hop on yet another family zoom call. It’s a purposeful break vs. an avoidance.
I started my Christmas break with passive rest. I had so many voices in my head telling me I had work to do, that I should use this time off to be productive, that I should be ashamed of myself for staying my Christmas pajamas all day, that I was just plain lazy and that’s all I will ever amount to. And in a massive internal battle, I defiantly held up my middle finger at those voices and said “watch me” as I told Netflix “yes please continue to the next episode of this show.” But I got weary of that fight pretty quickly, and something in me shifted. I saw the holiday break as an opportunity I don’t normally have to enjoy an entire book cover-to-cover, or bake, or any of the other simple pleasures I relegate to “I’ll have time for that sh*t when I retire.”
Passive rest wasn’t actually restful for me at all. But active rest was. It did what passive rest never could: it made space for a reset. By intentionally, purposefully, and joyfully engaging in restful things — reading a book, watching TV, baking cookies, lighting candles — all that angst inside started to dissipate. I enjoyed myself. And to my surprise, at the end of the holiday break, I found myself ready for what came next.
Funny how those words — rest, reset — are only one letter apart. All it takes is rest making a little space.
The theological term for the Trinity, perichoresis, which often is conceived in the West as an “eternal divine dance,” has at its root the Greek word choreiun which means “making space for.” When we rest, we are acting on that divine stamp within ourselves that makes space for God to work within us.
Rest well, dear readers.