Rest Is the New Royal

If you’re faithful, then there should be visible fruit of your faithfulness. So you work, strive, and succeed. Then your success is noticed, and you become the one who handles things. You’re the one called upon because you can be trusted.

Then you start to believe the hype, yes, call on me, and I’ll handle it. And secretly, you kind of love being the one who handles it all. You see yourself in your Wonder Woman stance, handling everything a day throws at you. You check off your boxes and earn admiration from others as they marvel at how you do it all.

A part of you may actually fall into the trap of Deuteronomy 8:14 and become proud. You stop noticing that you’re being trusted to do things and start believing you are the one who holds things together. Until…slowly things start to shift.

What you once called success starts to feel like a cage requiring continual alertness. Notifications are constantly pinging and flashing, making your phone look like an arcade game. You pop up wide awake in the middle of the night when you suddenly remember the email response you forgot to send. One more thing turns into ten more, and you start a new day with little sleep. Ask me how I know.

The sharpness in your voice elicited a side-eye from those who once marveled. Your family used to happily load the dishwasher after dinner, but then they see you unload and reload it. Lately, everyone gives you space immediately after eating. So you shut down the house in silence and drop into bed exhausted, longing for the rest that the quiet promised.

Too wired for sleep and too depleted to plan, tears begin to escape. Followed by a continuous run-on sentence of sorrows, frustrations, and fears that you finally release to the Lord.

You miss Him, and He missed you, too.

Striving produces exhaustion, but abiding produces rest.