[Rest]lessness
A place not to be feared, but followed.
A while back, I was talking with a woman I admire deeply. As I shared with her some concerns I was holding, connected to fears about returning to a place and person I used to be, she put a word to what I was processing — restlessness.
I spent much of my young adulthood denying my restlessness, willing myself to be content when I was really only being submissive, and I grieve what that young woman missed. Discovering new places and people, opportunities to know myself better and step more fully and confidently into the calling God had placed within me — I convinced myself that the path to Christian maturity was to “fall in line” rather than learning to recognize the Spirit guiding me toward wholeness. Even when it wasn’t demanded, I tended toward fierce (at times, blind) loyalty and a gripping desire to please others, so much so that I habituated myself into believing I was incapable of making wise decisions on my own. I assumed any hint of restlessness was simply selfishness that needed to be confessed and left. I have journals filled with those confessions.
Somewhere along the way, I began to see all my anxieties as a lack of trust. God’s sovereignty was brought to bear on my life as a holy acceptance of his will (often assigned or interpreted by others), leaving little room for a holy kind of restlessness.1 I have worked hard, painfully hard, to uncover the source of my insecurities and irritabilities, both of which are clues pointing toward my restlessness. I may have come to know and trust Christ in my single digits, but it’s taken me nearly three decades to believe he loves me as I am. So when a new threat comes armed to deliver me right back to that place of boot-strapped contentment (or resignation), I resist. Sometimes, quite desperately. It used to show up in clinging to relationships with all my might. These days, I find this resistance arrives in swirling thoughts, sleepless hours in the middle of the night, and escalated reactions to small annoyances. I cannot rest.
So many of the psalms point us toward remembrance.
Remembering God’s character.
Remembering his promises.
Remembering the days of his past faithfulness.
Remembering myself as I truly am.
Remember, Lord, your compassion
and your faithful love,
for they have existed from antiquity.
Psalm 25:6
It may seem like rest is the antidote to restlessness, but what if the restlessness itself is offering a place of rest? A place not to be feared, but to be followed. When I discover something hard or uncomfortable within — something I want to resist, why is my assumption that I need the opposite?
One of my favorite songs is “Come and Rest” by Jess Ray and Taylor Leon.
Come and rest, come and rest, come and rest, in the love of God.
There’s a time for all your workin’
There’s a time to put your hand to the plow.
But can you hear him?
Jesus is singin’
Come and lay your burdens down.
What if going back — remembrance — offers me a way forward, or better yet, a way further in? In, to this place of restless rest, a place of welcome and hope.
I am grateful to Michelle VanLoon for tenderly helping me discover this theme of holy restlessness.