An Introduction To R.E.S.T

This is for me a safe place to be myself. A place to be vulnerable. Life inside my temporal lobe, extended to my external reality. What follows is an introduction, a Prologue, to my forthcoming work, “R.E.S.T. in God: A Scriptural Pathway to Overcoming Anxiety and Depression”.

I hope that it may inspire you and leave you with a thirst for the coming completed work

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." – Matthew 11:28 (ESV)

Prologue: the guilt of limits

 

It’s amazing the difference a few miles and a time zone can make. Roughly 752 miles (to be exact) and the world continues as normal. Pattern and rhythm absolutely unaffected. People going about their days not only completely unaware of the state of things just a bit south but completely unaware for the most part of the people 752 inches from them. Hurricane Helene has absolutely decimated our area.

 

It’s a rat race!

 

Here the reminder resonates and honestly begins a bit of rhythmic dancing amongst my thoughts. I am nowhere near home. I am nowhere near the plague of nature that has wrecked my home.

 

Anxiety has crept in on more occasions than river architectural tours that flow across the river here in Chicago. I’m not a big fan of crowds. As a Pastor I do see the irony of that statement. It’s much akin to the looks that I often feel, full of tattoos, when I symbolically utter my disdain for needles.

 

Rest. And much of it.

 

I do not deserve the amount of sleep I have had in creature comforts while the rest of my family is back home without power, in a literal state of emergency. The trip however, could not be cancelled and I certainly could not leave my wife to navigate the city alone.

 

I have awaken as clockwork each morning between 5 and 5:30am each morning. Back home, in my natural rhythm that is 6 to 6:30am and in line with my body’s natural pattern.

 

I am a creature of habit.

 

 

The city flows and traffic seems to dance a bit while I sit in a coffee shop indulging in a beverage I don’t deserve that is not even possible back home. Guilt now begins to wreck and riddle me, it begins to enter into a dance of sorts with the anxiety that I have already been experiencing due to the crowds and my relative disdain for getting out of my normal habits and rhythms.

 

There sits just to my right another person absolutely woefully unaware of his surroundings, confined to his own headspace. Living between the Airpods nestled in his ears.

 

How can we feel so alone in a crowded place?

 

 

I want to be able to do more back home, but I also needed this bit of escape. You see outside of the natural disaster currently striking my home, I’m also a Pastor who admittedly is on the verge of burnout.

 

I have tried my best, maybe to no avail, to do every single thing I can for every single other person. My poison hasn’t been my forgetting of my family and abandoning that first love.

 

It’s so much worse honestly.

 

 

I have abandoned self care to many extremes. My own mental health has been often cast to the backburner. Somehow to the best of my abilities I have continued to provide attention to my wife and children (though I’m sure it hasn’t been to the absolute best of my abilities.) I have continued to provide attention to my church family (though I’m sure it hasn’t been to the absolute buest of my abilities.)

 

I have lost myself in the shuffle.

 

 

That’s why Jesus words, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) are so important and if I’m honest with myself a requirement.

 

Those words are not a mere suggestion, they are a dual command with a promise. Come to me, command. I will give you rest, promise.

 

Command and promise.

 

 

Guilt as I have suggested have destroyed me. Anxiety as I have revealed have kept me from experiencing the beauty and “bigness” of this town. Chicago is by far one of the most beautiful place I have ever seen. To look around and simply think, “God made all this!”

 

He created the Sun, The Moon, The Earth, The Tribune Tower, The Chicago River, Me….

 

He created me.

 

 

He didn’t spend any less thought or effort creating me. I will at best last 100 years in flesh form here on this earth. The Chicago River will run until the waters cease to exist. The Sun will burn bright in the sky until it doesn’t.

 

I recognize the grandiosity of the “bigness” of all these things. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks, He created me. Even more astounding, I’ll let Paul explain it in even more eloquence, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:20)

 

I am His workmanship.

 

 

We are created on purpose, for a purpose. I am starting to understand because of, REST, that the best I can do, is the best He can do through me. That is absolutely humbling. Everything I can accomplish I accomplish because it is for His’ grander plan, His’ divine providence.

 

I have to slow down, I have to take me out of the equation. I have to leave behind the thrill of accomplishment, the high of “helpfulness.”

 

I am not immune to my own “smallness.”

 

 

Anything that I do, I do because He is working something together. Again Paul clears things up a bit, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) 

 

I am called, according to His’ purpose. The fact that I am here, resting, should not bring me guilt or shame. It should remind me that there is something much bigger going on here. As Shakespeare says, “the game’s afoot” and He is preparing me for something that I could not possibly accomplish without this rest, without this refreshment.

 

My Soul needed rest.

 

 

Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Are you burdened?

Are you anxious? Are you in state of depression? Are you feeling guilty? Are you a prisoner to shame?

 

Hopefully what is to follow is cognitive, helpful and reassuring. I needed everything you are about to see. This is as much for me as it is for literally anyone else. God has made a promise to me, if I am faithful to complete this work His is faithful to use it in someone else’s life.

 

I can’t help everyone; I know that now. Can God however use me to help you?

 

 

These promises are for you. They are for my children and their children to follow.