Everybody knows that overtired babies get cranky.
So do overtired moms, dads, toddlers, and children of any age.
When we don’t get physical rest, it shows.
“What’s wrong?” I ask my teenage daughter when I can see dark circles under her eyes or my young son when his eyelids look heavy. “You couldn’t sleep?”
A nod of defeat is always the answer.
I, myself as an adult, unwittingly reveal when sleep evades me. Unfortunately the telltale sign is outward — and inward — grumpiness.
But now, at the end of a long school year and on the brink of summer, rest in many forms awaits.
“Rest” for some families may include traveling, biking, fishing, swimming, boating, camping, or playing baseball. Or it may be as simple as reading a book, going for a walk, or sitting in the sun on a beautiful day.
Whatever form it takes, rest is imperative for our bodies as well as our souls.
Activity and rest
Physically God made our bodies to require both activity and rest. Spiritually our souls need the same. If we are in a constant state of motion, always doing and never resting, our interior lives suffer, stunting the deepening of our relationship with God.
Resting in the Lord is more than just getting a good night’s sleep. It means spending time with Him in prayer at home or at church, studying His Word, receiving Him in the Sacraments, and conversing with Him about all things on your heart as you carry Him with you throughout your external daily work.
It means keeping His peace in your heart no matter what the world brings your way.
True surrender
People like me, who like control, find it very challenging to rest in the Lord, to actually surrender worries from the heart and allow Him to take care of them in His own time and in His own way.
In my humanness I try to hold on to things I think I can control but really can’t. In this way my soul is constantly steeped in busy-ness, just like my outward body is constantly busy with caring for people in my life.
Resting in the Lord requires a willful “letting go” of these things I cannot control. However, it is not forgetting these things, but truly believing that He will provide a way to resolve them according to His will, which is not my own.
Truly resting in the Lord results in a trust beyond my human capacity, a peace only He can give.
“Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7).
Rest amid chaos
Just as our outward exhaustion can show if we do not get physical rest, so too do our souls sag if we do not take the time to surrender the worries in our hearts and rest in the Lord.
We are children of God, after all, no matter what age we are. And like any good Father, He can recognize an overtired cranky soul when He sees one.
He calls each of us to rest in Him amid our inner and outer chaos, especially now, as the summer beckons.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a teacher’s aide at St. John the Baptist School in Waunakee.