Rest for the Wicked in The eye of every storm

Wednesday

There are times when I need rest. There’s a song by Thrice called Come All You Weary, undoubtedly based off the verse in Matthew, which happened to come on my Spotify shuffle this morning. Some lyrics:

Come all you weary with your heavy loads
Lay down your burdens find rest for your souls
Cause my yoke is easy and my burden is kind
I’ll take yours upon me and you can take mine
Come all you weary, move through the earth,
You’ve been spurned at fine restaurants and kicked out of church,
I’ve got a couple of loaves, so sit down at my feet,
Lend me your ears and we’ll break bread and eat
Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Find rest for your souls

On the first listen I’d assumed the thought behind those words was the importance of being a great friend. Friends typically lead us to rest, and rest does not imply going to sleep. Often times rest is learning the truth of ourselves which we were too afraid to face. Friends should be able to lack the protection filters one has in place, guarding their own thoughts. The rest is the knowledge of no longer worrying in light of the bitter truth.

The second time around I thought about it a little differently. Weariness is not a physical state. I believe exhaustion carries that title. Weariness is an emotional state, where one has dealt with a problem for so long, or sought a solution for so long, mental accumen starts to decrease and hope absconded in desperation.

In the stanza, Dustin Kensrue does not write about laying down and sleeping. In fact, he challenges us to keep moving forward, but in a subtle way. As a friend, he offers the simple promise of exchanging heavy loads, where he takes the heavy one, and gives the subject the lighter one. No where does it say, “Stop,” or “Give up.”

Rest is important and our society today does not allocate much time for it. More and more places are 24 hours. More jobs ratchet production up overnight to increase profits. The world does not stop. So we shouldn’t either, right? Wrong.

I’m reminded of those blurry framed pictures in the mall where I would stare at it, cross my eyes, and after a moment a 3D image appeared in the chaos. Many of my problems arise from staring at it for too long. I become overwhelmed by the magnitude of taking a first step towards a solution that I forget to take it. When I do take that step, eventually a picture appears. It’s not clear at first but I know it’s there.

Rest comes in when one stops looking at the problem. Our minds need a break from ourselves. I’ve started three second meditations, something I’ve always laughed at doing, thinking some one would ring a bell, shroud me in robes, and I’d magically be a Zen yoga master drinking pumpkin spiced lattes and can’t even. It’s not like that at all.

For me, it’s simple: I breathe in, feel that air and how cool it is inside my nostrils, and breathe out, concentrating on the act itself. Thoughts and worries come, but I acknowledge them, and then I swipe them away by refocusing on my breathing.

It takes three seconds, tops. Ninety seconds restructures my whole day. That is a form of rest, a respite from weariness. Today, as I rage this battle, I need to remember to rest when I am weary. Trust me, with my insurance company I woke up weary this morning. Yet even thinking of this song, writing about it, gave me enough rest to make better choices for my plans today.

I’m going to remain centered and focused today, and weariness will not creep its tendrils around me. If I do become overburdened, I will force myself to stop and take the recovery time I need to carry on.

I hope we all do. Happy hump day.