I hope you’re cool with me being honest, because today, we’re going to talk about rest.
For a couple months, I’ve been really, really tired. So tired that I rarely make it past 9 PM, and if I do, it’s til 9:30. And it’s not just the physical tiredness, it’s that I’ve been…emotionally tired too.
Suddenly, I’m not keeping up all that well. As Brandon and I ramp up the Fools in Love Podcast, work full time, and raise our family and tend to our marriage, I am left feeling stressed out and exhausted.
So over the past several weeks, I’ve been thinking through what to do and why I’m just now feeling like it’s hard to keep up. There have been a few times when I just felt this quiet whisper telling me that it was the blog that was getting to be too much. And I kept being like, “NO! I love this blog so much! I don’t want to give it up!” (Spoiler alert: I’m not giving up blogging.)
But two things happened. The first is that Brandon, who does my blog graphics for me and puts the actual post together so that I can focus on the writing, was getting stressed out from always having blog to-dos. And he’d never been stressed by them in the past year and a half, so it seemed like a “why now?” question. And the other thing that happened was that, two Saturdays ago, I went on a run. I was just starting to get upset about what to do and how to fit in rest when it was like God just spoke right to my heart. I just FELT Him tell me that the answer was to start blogging only once per week. As soon as I heard it, I felt peace that I hadn’t felt in weeks. I barely even noticed the rest of my run because I was excited to tell Brandon that we were going to go from 2 posts a week to 1. When I got home, I told him that blogging less was the answer and it was how we would finally fit some rest (and sanity) into our schedule.
The other cool part about what I can only assume was a convo with God, was that He told me it was okay if even once a week eventually felt like too much blogging. He reminded me that not every blogger has to be the same. If in the future, I can only handle once every other week (or less) that would be okay too. And again, I just felt this amazing peace realizing that I can make and change the rules around here…any time I feel the whisper telling me to rest.
So last week, I only blogged once. Instead of putting up new posts every Monday and Thursday, it’s now just Mondays. And already, I’ve noticed a difference. I’ve had more time to spend with B and the kids, more time to work on other things, and less guilt about putting away the computer and the phone.
In these busy lives we lead, it can be easy to tune out the glaring warning signs that we’re doing too much. It can be hard to stop going–whether we’re doing a side hustle, have a few too many extracurriculars for our kids, or are trying to be SuperWoman.
Here’s some of the things I was going through that ultimately forced me to pay attention to the “call to rest.”
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- Almost daily headaches
- Rarely staying awake past 9 PM
- Feeling anxious and overwhelmed
- Waking up already feeling behind
- To-Do lists that allowed ZERO rest
- No time for my relationship after work/kids/house
It was really the last one that finally woke me up–between never being able to spend QT with Brandon and knowing how much stress it was causing him to help with this blog constantly..well, something had to change. And so I finally listened to what I knew I’d been hearing for awhile…get some rest.
If you feel like you are having a hard time keeping up, it may be time for you to do less too. Resting doesn’t have to mean giving up something forever. It means finding out what can be stopped or reduced for awhile until you feel ready to ramp back up.
I’m ready to rest a little bit more. Are you?
