rest

what I learned in April: Uber, Rifle Paper Co, and Coloring Books for adults

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

It was a busy month, but then again I think every month lately has been. April was busy in a different way because my husband and I were out of town for 5 days at a conference/getaway. Which made the rest of the month … well … a bit exhausting, between getting ready to go out of town and then coming back from being away and having to catch up on life. It caught me off guard – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here are a few things I learned in April (linking up with Emily Freeman):

what we learned in april

1 – Koala bears are not bears, but marsupials. We learned this from a new favorite book recently checked out from the library: Xander’s Panda Party.

IMG_86722 –  Rifle Paper Co. and its designer/founder are pretty amazing. My husband grew up with the owner/designer, Anna Bond, and so we were able to get a personal tour of their company/storefront in Winter Garden. I was in awe of the remarkable growth in five years, and of Anna’s creativity and unassuming spirit. She graciously autographed a few items that I bought, and put up with my starry-eyed admiration when I asked to take a picture with her.

photo from nytimes.com

photo from nytimes.com

3 – Uber is the best way to get around Orlando, Florida. We tried this alternative-taxi service available through a phone app and loved it. I mean, within minutes of requesting a ride, a personal driver showed up at the very corner of Winter Garden where we were waiting.

4 – Crossway publishing company is a great fit for me as I write my first book with them. It’s on the topic of shame, and I’m unashamedly happy to be part of such a team. I was able to meet many of them in person for the first time at the conference we attended in Orlando (The Gospel Coalition).

5 – Jen Wilkin, Christina Fox, Jen Pollock Michel, and Bethany Jenkins are my newest favorite writing-friends. They have each written extensively for several sites including TGC blog, Her.meneutics, and/or Desiring God, and I wish we all lived closer and could hang out and talk about the highs and lows of writing and finding God in the midst of the process together.

6 – I can feel tremendous (self-imposed) pressure to go to all the scheduled events of a conference, when what I may need more is space to rest. This was the double-edged sword for me of the conference we attended: I didn’t want to miss anything, but it was a fairly packed schedule and so I also didn’t want to miss out on anything great either. Added to this was the fact that Seth and I needed/wanted a getaway just the two of us – and instead were part of a conference attended by 6,000. Next time: two separate trips for two different purposes!

7 – Doing too much without breaks leads to a break-down. The week after returning was rough for me. I felt tired yet needed to be “on” as a parent, counselor, and moving assistant for my in-laws. Note to self: working for days on end without rest/good breaks is not good for the soul or body.

coloring page8 – Best new trend worth trying: coloring books for adults. Seriously. Read this article, and then purchase your own here.

day 12: rest

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment
photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

Rest restores the soul and refreshes the body. How good of our Creator to build a rhythm for rest into our days! Six days of work; one Sabbath rest. Without it, we suffer. Burnout is epidemic in our culture – some of it obviously so, much more silently suffered. We are all tired. Crazy busy. Unfulfilled. Stressed out.

Rest requires that we step off the throne of our universe and admit that we are not in control, indispensable, or unlimited in our resources and strength. 

When was the last time you rested?

What’s keeping you from it now – today – the next five minutes?

Rest as a holy pause makes work more fruitful and reminds me that when I am still, God is still God. Fruitful work leads to rest, and rest leads to fruitful work.

Rest is communion with the holy. What’s holy in your life? It’s your people and God’s Word and His world. Sabbath is a time to reconnect with each. To get outside and soak up creation’s beauty; to stop the busy-ness and talk to the people with whom you share a dwelling; to say no to all the other constant demands and say yes to drinking deep of the fountain of life.

You’ll find invitations like this one with your name on it:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

frenchpressmornings.com

frenchpressmornings.com

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Day 12 of the 31-day writing challenge. Find more here.

when less is more

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 5 Comments
less-is-more

photo credit: vanseodesign.com

“More, more, more!” is the mantra of our American materialistic culture. It’s quite too easy to get sucked into this vortex of spending, consuming, acquiring, building, adding. This message of “more is better” spills into the crevices of my attitudes about time, too. So I find myself over-scheduling our summer days out of fear of boredom; and I find myself researching the next best activities in which to enroll my preschool-age daughters; and then while I’m at it, I might as well think about community classes I want to participate in as well. Plus I should actually be using my gym membership on a regular basis, and the memberships we have to a few local attractions. And before I know it, we are all spinning, spinning, spinning like the hamster in her crystal clear ball who thinks she may be running her way to freedom. Nothing has changed though – she is just as trapped as 15 minutes earlier when her owners placed her there for “exercise.”

For a while now, I’ve been challenged to consider “less is more.” Hatmaker’s book Seven is the best cultural expose [don’t know how to add an accent there] I’ve read so far – it will jolt you out of comfortable materialism in the best of ways. Slowly I’ve sought to purge our home of the unnecessary “stuff” and certainly to think twice before buying more. My friends Katherine, Mary, and Maria have inspired me to think about what this could mean for our kids, and I’ve done a few toy purges as a result. It turns out when my kids have fewer options to play with, they really are more focused and contented in their play. (Not to mention that there is less mess to clean up!) Simplicity Parenting is on my summer/fall reading shelf because I want to consider this further.

And then there’s time. Yesterday I trimmed a couple activities in favor of a more leisurely start to our day, and we were all happier. We need fallow hours in a day. I need them, and my three-year-old daughters certainly do. Less schedule means more quality time spent together in the ordinary, and less rushing. When I say quality time, this doesn’t usually mean that we are all blissfully enjoying one another’s company. It often means I am refereeing the screaming girls as they fight over the most-popular-toy-of-the-minute – but I am doing so without trying to also rush them out the door, to get dressed, to put on those darn ever-wandering shoes, to eat their breakfast NOW. Quality time with preschoolers looks like floor time doing a puzzle or playing a game. Or sipping my coffee while I enjoy their “show” (usually dancing to Frozen’s ever-popular “Let It Go”). And then some more coaching in how to get along with one another, and how not to have a mean face when you’re not getting what you want, and how to listen respectfully to me, and how to enjoy the slow unscheduled time.

Less is quite certainly more. It’s a trade I hope to continue to learn and practice and discover – that when I trade the “more is better” for “less is more” mantra, we all end up with what I wanted more of in the first place. More joy, more quality of life, more tuning in to the important and tuning out the apparently urgent, more of stepping out of the ever-exhausting cycle of acquiring stress and stuff in favor of learning contentment with what I have and appreciating what I’ve been given.

Thursday free write

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

I sit in a quiet, secluded room of the Y, looking out at the Norfolk skyline on the fourth rainy day (or so) we have had this week. A welcome respite for the dry ground, which has not received actual rainfall that counted since August 10.

And here is a picture of my soul this past month. There have been waterings occasionally, but nothing substantial. It’s been busy, busy with good and beautiful things like one last vacation at the beach and the twins’ third birthday and retreat speaking and community group and women’s Bible study and preschool. So I took a soul time out this morning, and I did a yoga class followed by this space. This space of breathing. Of noticing life rather than letting it rush me by. Yoga felt slow to my fast-paced world of efficiency. And isn’t that illuminating?

On a date with Seth last week, I realized a few things – that writing helps my soul to breathe and I haven’t been doing that enough this fall; that when exercise is pushed off my plate it means the plate is too full; and that weekends need to be empty when the weekday rhythm of a pastor and counselor’s family leaves us all coming up for breath at its end.

What am I doing about it? Well … this. Starting to get in the habit of writing again. Saying no to external demands to say yes to Christ’s whispered invitation to my soul to “Come … all who labor … and R E S T.” What helps you to rest? What keeps you from it? Do share. We all need reminders and ideas of how to pursue the rest for which we have been redeemed.

links to savor on your Sunday

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 2 Comments

Good morning, friends! This Sunday morning, I am lighter than I’ve been in awhile because of completing yesterday’s retreat speaking on wisdom (and being reminded of the beautiful gospel truth I had the privilege of telling to these 70+ ladies yesterday, that I told first to myself – wisdom comes in a Person … more posts to come, I’m sure); and coming back home from our last week at the beach with family. A last week to soak up sunshine, the unmatched glory of an ocean-meeting-sky horizon, the break from go-go-go to simply be free from schedule and appointments and work, to focus on what (who) is most important: the sun-kissed faces of daughters; my tanned face husband; parents-in-law who shower us with love; my Creator-God as the giver of the gifts of this week.

And now, here comes the week out of its double-barreled shotgun. Church is up and running and in full fall swing for our pastor and counselor family. A little voice urgently summons me next door a full HOUR before normal wake-up time (really?!), and there are words I wanted to write and a week I wanted to pray through. And it’s easy to feel like vacation has evaporated like a morning mist. Oh my.

Then I read these words as another wife and mom anticipates her week, and I smile in recognition and I know I’m not alone, and that there will be grace for each challenge.

And a thought-provoking post on what I really need this September, which exposes my own similar struggles.

Finally, another pastor’s wife talks about finding Sabbath rest when Sunday’s the biggest work day of your week and your kids are young.

Enjoy, friends … now on to step 1 of this week: get some caffeine and try to love all the people in my house on my way to the coffee pot …

Sabbath rest for a mother’s heart

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

If you find yourself in need of rest, true heart rest, these links will help you follow the voice of Jesus as he leads us there (Matthew 11:28-30).

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

A poem by Sarah Dunning Park – http://simplemom.net/poem-book-learning/

“Chatting at the Sky” – When the days are long and the minutes are longer

Christina Fox at “The Gospel Coalition blog” – Motherhood for the rest of us

(in)courage blog  – How gentleness makes our children great

Jen Hatmaker – More grace: on not being mean, hateful, and horrible

 

 

Jesus Encounters the Woman at the Well – or should I say, Target …

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

As our community group studies the book of John together, using the fabulous “good book series” by Tim Chester, we come to this week’s encounter about Jesus meeting “A Desperate Woman” (the Samaritan woman at the well, story found in John 4). Raise your hand if you qualify. Yes, I see those hands. One of the questions prompted me to reflect on how Jesus would address me. If Jesus encountered me, probably in the aisles of Target, and talked of living water, what would he point to as patterns where I seek satisfaction elsewhere? What’s my “if only” that I’m living out of? I share this hoping you will relate to this desperate woman and the Jesus who offers her true Life.

“Heather, look at what’s in your cart. You think that once you and your daughters are dressed well and once your home looks like the pages of Pottery Barn, you will be satisfied. You also think once your life is so-called ‘balanced’ (meaning you feel in control most of the time and have enough time to yourself), you’ll feel satisfied. You’ll be able to exhale when your relationships are conflict-free. Not so, my daughter. I watch you run yourself ragged and overspend trying to be satisfied and feel secure. Stop running. Rest in me, in the midst of the chaos of your days. Let me direct you. Live out of the inner satisfaction you’ve tasted before through my Spirit who dwells within you. Live out of the identity you have in me – you are mine; you’re beautiful; you’re more than ‘good enough.’ You’re righteous. Perfect. Complete. The Spirit is there to help you experience these realities, to believe I am true and deeply satisfying, to free you from places you run for temporary, fleeting satisfaction. Drink deeply of my living water. That’s right. You can start putting back most of what you’ve filled your cart with today. And I promise you’re not trading in joy – you will know it more deeply in me, as you always have.”

awed by the moment and calmed by Jesus’ love

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

These are the two themes that I feel like God’s been teaching me about – much of it through observing our quickly growing almost-11-month-olds. They are crawling everywhere and into everything. Very curious about life! We love that although it makes our days much busier as well. The hardest part of the evening for them (and all of us) is that 4-7pm timeframe when it’s not yet bedtime and both naps are over for the day. And they begin fussing, which can quickly turn into crying and screaming inconsolably. Almost inconsolably. Some days they can be quieted by something quite simple, childish really (and they are babies, after all). We stumbled upon it accidentally when we started singing to them the first song that came to mind, “Jesus Loves Me.” Most of the time, this will calm Lucia and Alethia. Or at least give a few minutes’ reprieve from the screaming. The words and the melody familiar to them because it has been sung over them by parents, grandparents, friends, has a quieting effect on them. As I noticed this “magic song,” it made me pray for them that they would always be quieted by Jesus’ love. Long after they would outgrow this song, would that the truth conveyed by this little childhood tune sink deep into their hearts! And as I prayed for them, I started by praying for my heart, too, that can be so easily tossed  to and fro by the ups and downs of a day or a month or a year or a season. In case it’s been awhile since you’ve sung that tune, here’s the main verse of that little ditty:

Jesus loves me

This I know

For the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong [and aren’t we all “little ones” compared to God’s greatness?]

They are weak [oh, so aware of this for me!]

But He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me [repeat 3 x’s]

For the Bible tells me so.

My best friend’s daughter “sings” this tune by saying “Bible” when you say, “Jesus loves me.” Isn’t that adorable? And how much I have to learn! Truly we are to become like little children in order to know the great truths about our God and King.

As Seth and I move into this new phase of parenting children, training and discipline and instruction are topics we are earnestly seeking to learn about because we are aware of how much they are soaking up each day and how much they begin to be in need of parental guidance. We have begun watching an excellent parenting series by Paul Tripp (one of our counseling professors when we were in seminary), and he begins his series by discussing our need to provide our children with a God-saturated environment. By this he means that we are not only to teach our kids truths about God, but to give our children a sense of awe about God. Which, he points out, cannot happen if we ourselves are not in awe of God.

A book I’m currently reading is helping me to open my eyes to the awe of the moment, the richness of our great God who is present in each moment. And so many moments I skip by or pass over or endure with gritted teeth because I’m missing God. For all of you who can relate, I cannot recommend highly enough Ann Voskamp‘s book, “One Thousand Gifts.” The book itself is a gift to me who has trouble seeing what really matters. She echoes Tripp’s teaching as she writes:

“Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don’t see God, I’ll bow down before everything else. … How I want to see the weight of glory break my thick scales, the weight of glory smash the chains of desperate materialism, split the numbing shell of deadening entertainment, bust up the ice of catatonic hearts. I want to see God …”

Voskamp writes about how hurry is the enemy of awe, that “Hurry always empties a soul. … I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment. … The fast have spiritually slow hearts.” How this convicts me, who prides myself on efficiency and races against the naptime clock to see how much I can possibly fit into those brief “free” hours of a day! Who, in trying to recruit my babies into my hurried lifestyle, causes exhaustion and stress for us both.

I have much to learn. I am thankful for this moment, this time when babies are sleeping to soak in these truths and ask for grace to keep doing so. If God is present everywhere and in every moment, I only must have eyes to see Him. Which I feel like I am only beginning to do.

comfort and utility

/ Heather Davis Nelson / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I was watching Lucia as she played on a blanket on the floor. Bedtime was quickly approaching, and she decided that it was time to try to put herself to sleep. She has developed quite a “lovey” obsession in the past few months and uses her soft pink-striped zebra to cozy up to as she drifts off to sleep. Sometimes I have found her with this snuggly blanket animal almost entirely covering her face. (Yes, it did scare me a bit because of SIDS paranoia … but it seems lightweight and small enough that it won’t do harm.) So, naturally, she reached out for the closest object (hoping it would be her zebra) and began snuggling up to it, rubbing it against her face. The funny thing about it was that it was her hard plastic alien teething toy. So it must have been far from soothing – in fact, quite the opposite.

And that got me thinking. The problem wasn’t that the teething toy didn’t have a good purpose – and could even be comforting when used as such – but that Lucia was trying to use it in a way different than as intended. She had confused the toy for her lovey. Of course, it didn’t have the intended effect and she became more fussy instead of less so. Sweet Lucia later drifted off to sleep happily tucked in with her zebra … and I shared a small chuckle to myself.

How like Lucia I am! Yet without the innocence of her infant mix-ups. What God has given me for a certain purpose I use in the wrong way, trying to find soul-comfort where there is none. Like food and sleep and “me time”. An organized home, uninterrupted phone conversations, babies who never cry, clothes that flatter, a post-pregnancy body that matches my pre-pregnancy one … the list goes on and on. And God must look at me, thinking, “No – that’s not the purpose! She is trying to find soul-rest and comfort in created things, not me. Gifts I give her have replaced me, the Giver. Meant to be enjoyed in their place. But she will never find the true comfort she seeks from these things.” I am to find comfort in Him and utilize His gifts for their purpose. But I reverse that, using God to try to get what I want and seeking comfort in His gifts. And because He is my compassionate Father as well as my God, He gently replaces my items of false comfort with Himself, the true Comforter. Again He issues the invitation to my heart,

“Come … all you who are weary and heavy burdened … find rest for your souls … for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

 

where did August go?

/ Heather Davis Nelson / 1 Comment

So, alas, August came and went and I did not blog at all. Now it is barely September, and I hope to get back into a routine which will include blogging.

I have enjoyed reading through the Bible this summer. I started out attempting “90 days in the Word” which is turning into, well, a few more than 90. It has been enlightening to get a broad sweeping overview of the Story that is also my story through the life Christ has given me.  And regardless of how many times I read the Bible, I always find something new. Here are a few of my favorites from  the past few weeks:

Isaiah 60:4 – a picture of heaven, when Christ returns again: “Look and see, for everyone is coming home!” Particularly poignant in light of our friend Beverlee Kirkland’s recent home-going

convicting commentary in Jeremiah that so easily applies to me and to our culture today: “From the least to the greatest, their lives are rules by greed.” (Jeremiah 6:1-3)

Jeremiah 31:25 – God is talking about the future restoration of Israel from their captivity – and  ultimately pointing to Jesus’ arrival as the one who invites all into His rest – “For I have given REST to the weary and JOY to the sorrowing.”

Micah 7:7-8 – “As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.”

Luke 1:78-79 – “Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” Zechariah, a prophet in Jesus’ day, speaks these words when he sees baby Jesus in the Temple for the first time

And a convicting note to end on, which I’ll point you to Katherine’s blog to read a full exposition on this idea: Luke 21:34 -“Watch out! Don’t let your hearts be dulled by carousing and drunkenness and by the worries of this life. Don’t let that day [when Jesus returns or when we die] catch you unaware …” It’s easy to see how the heart grows dull through “carousing and drunkenness” but Jesus goes further to include “this life’s worries.” Who can not but relate to that one? It is much more subtle, this kind of dulling of the heart and numbing to the Life that is truly life. Oh, that we would NOT be caught unaware!