January Mental Health Tip of the Month
“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
-Matthew 11:28-30 NIV-
The Importance of Rest
The holidays can be stressful, frustrating and even overwhelming at times. Lots of things to do, people to see and places to go. Now that the holidays are over, it’s important for us to get back to our normal routines and create some time to rest. When we talk about rest, most people associate rest with sleep. True rest is not sleep. When I’m talking about rest, I’m talking about resting in relationship with our Creator. In the busyness of the holidays, it can be very easy to lose sight of God and the rest that can only be found in Him. Overloading our schedules, not taking time to rest, and allowing ourselves to get burned out can create a lot of dangers to our spiritual health as well as our physical health. It can create a lot of undue stress which can wreak havoc on our bodies creating a lot of physical ailments as well as mental health issues. Rest is essential to our minds and bodies. There is a purpose to it…it’s for close relationship with the Father, it’s for the renewal of our strength, to refresh our souls, and to maintain our peace and joy.
Balance
During the holidays, we are especially busy, our priorities are out of sorts, and we can lack balance. How do we get back to the balance in our lives after the holidays are over? In order to do that, we need to know what our priorities are. Our priorities should be in the following order: God, Family, Self, Work and then Serving Others. It’s when we get these out of order that it starts creating a lot of problems in our lives. During the holidays, other things can take our attention away from our priorities, but once they are over, we need to be intentional about getting things back in order. We have a bad habit of putting ourselves last. If we’re not taking care of ourselves in a healthy way, we’re not going to be healthy for anyone else. Rest is extremely important to our well-being and without it, we can become very cranky, selfish and sometimes downright rude. We can create balance by continuing to bring ourselves back to our priority list and not allowing ourselves to get too far off track.
What rest looks like
We rest in close relationship with Him and intimacy in His presence. Intimacy with Him demands silence, meditation and contemplation…this is how we rest in relationship. If you’re needing some peace of mind or you want to have a deeper relationship with God, go get quiet somewhere and spend some intentional time with Him as often as possible. Silence is one of the biggest pieces to resting in relationship with God. We need the silence in order to hear His still, small voice. The quieter we can get, the easier it is to hear Him. With all of the noise around us every day…it can make it very difficult to hear Him. Start with just a few minutes at a time and gradually increase that time as you go. In that quiet time, we are essentially meditating. We are focusing on God, the things of God and His word. When we meditate on the things of God, our spirit is searching the deep things of God while our mind is simultaneously being renewed. Psalm 131:2 says, “Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul”. We can do this in His presence by taking some deep breaths and just focusing on Him. Slowing down our breathing can calm our whole bodies. And we just let His peace and love wash over us like a warm blanket.
How to incorporate rest
We have to prioritize some leisure time and build that rest into our weekly life. Sometimes, we have to be intentional about setting time aside to rest, otherwise, we will find excuses not to. If possible, set aside some time every day to spend in quiet time with Him. I always recommend first thing in the morning because how we start our day matters. If we start it with Him, we’re more likely to be able to maintain that peace and joy throughout the day. If we start it rushed and anxious, we’ll most likely feel that anxiety all day long. Be intentional about honoring the Sabbath. Take one day a week just for rest. The Sabbath is a time to cease from self-effort and rest in God’s finished work. It’s not just a physical break, but an inner rest from anxiety and strain. It’s about resting and spending time with family while putting everything else aside for the day. Sometimes we have to get creative with our rest. We go through seasons that are busier than others, especially when kids are young. When kids are younger and demand more time, you have to think outside of the box sometimes in order to find 5 minutes for yourself. If you’re married, switch off with your spouse…one night you get some free time, the next time, your spouse gets some free time so that you are both able to find time to rest. If your bathroom is all you can find in order for you to have 5 minutes of peace, then spend some quiet time there by just sitting
down, closing your eyes and doing some deep breathing. God shows us His love through rest… and that’s one way that we can show our love to Him…by making Him the priority and resting in relationship with Him.
Conclusion
The more time we spend to rest, the closer we walk with God and resting in that relationship with Him, the more peace and restfulness we will feel. We don’t always have to be busy or run ourselves ragged. When we take that time to rest and then we get back to doing what needs to be done, we will have more energy and clarity to focus on the tasks at hand instead of trying to push through and create stress, anxiety and crankiness. Even Jesus needed rest, “Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to the disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31 NIV). If Jesus needed rest, how much more do we? For the full article on ‘Headed For a Burnout’, click here and for the ‘Burnout Self-Assessment’, click here.