The view of DC was nothing short of breathtaking as I sat and sipped at the rooftop restaurant atop our hotel. After a few deep breaths, I pulled out my notebook, pen, and serious determination to dream up what I wanted the next month to look like. The past two weeks were very generous in their provision of crisis. With each deep breath I knew the next month would need to offer more rest, and rest was going to necessitate grace.
It was already the last day of the current month, so there would be no well planned, Marie Kondo-esque tidying up of current projects and color coded projected start dates for new ones. There would be an acute awareness of all that would have to remain undone or get done at a significantly slower rate than I am used to. I ordered seconds of the crunchy goodness. I was already struggling. In part, I felt like I was already slowing down in my life. Taking (and passing!) my National Counselor Exam and hosting my first retreat already necessitated a lifestyle shift that had me dolling out lots of no’s to family and friends, placing potential clients on a growing waitlist, and utilizing grocery delivery services and Amazon more than ever. Disappointment at needing to continue the waitlist, further streamline household tasks, and not add a single additional social gathering to my calendar next month felt necessary, wise, kind, compassionate, but not truly welcomed.
If I am honest, I wanted to rest enough to do more. I wanted grace to do more. I didn’t want the kind of rest that gives way to clarity and offers wisdom to choose well. I didn’t want grace to say no, to manage the disappointment from others when I said no, or grace to firm up boundaries that would give way to better yeses and better stewardship of my time, energy, finances, capacity, creativity, or talents.
In fact, that’s a lot of what I’ve been told about rest and grace. To think about how much more I can do once well rested. To know there’s a grace for all I need to do, His grace is perfect in my weakness, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. I mean these things are true, these things I do believe, I just also am coming to understand that rest and grace are not completely or even mostly about doing let alone doing more.
If I let it, rest and grace will give way to being, seeing, realizing, healing, and I could go on and on. Me being well rested allows me to recognize and welcome grace in my life and shifts my capacity to extend it to others.
If I am exhausted it’s likely that I will miss grace. It’s likely that lack, comparison, fear, anxiety will scream, yell, and holler over the gentle and tender voice of grace that says that’s enough for today, honor your boundary, go for a walk and see what clarity you may reach along the way, etc. My weariness will likely assume the worse, highlight where I’ve fallen short, and is likely to criticize me to the end of a task instead of reminding me of how far I’ve come, how faithful God is, and how capable He in His graciousness will see me through to the completion of a task. Lack of rest makes it so easy for shame and guilt to creep in, if for nothing else, me wondering what’s wrong for me for being tired, for desiring rest, for not working more or harder or faster.
I’m finishing this post in hindsight. I’m writing it in the month that was next month at the start of this post. I’m finishing 21 days in and looking at the ways in which for the rest of this year, yup not just the month or the quarter, the year, I will continuing to slow down, rest more, and will need more grace. I am writing this and realizing the reality is rest and grace for one blog post a month and not two for the rest of the year. I am writing and realizing that I will be bringing back the Wonderful Wednesday online faith community in September and October and not group therapy this fall as much as I wanted. I am writing and realizing that I won’t be accepting invitations to do talks or interviews for the rest of the year no matter how much I really really really want to cheer women and girls on in their wellness journey. I am writing and realizing that these are a handful of shifts that will help me rest more and experience grace in new and deeply needed ways.
My hope for you in the coming weeks and days is that you welcome rest and grace, not to do more, but to simply be, see, realize, heal. That rest and grace become less of the mean and your tired, weary, burnout, anxious, depressed, triggered, uncared for self comes to an end, the end. That rest and grace become the end by which you find new meaning or perhaps restored meaning. That as grace whispers to your resting soul you choose wisely that which allows you to be well, to be ALL that you have been given the grit + grace to be.
With Love,
Grit + Grace