In Idleness There Is No Peace

Last updated on: January 28, 2015 at 5:25 pm by Rebecca Frech

In Idleness There Is No Peace 2015-01-28T17:25:02-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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I was flipping through my archives last week in a mad search for a picture I knew I’d posted a few years back, and I began to notice a theme for the past few years. Over and over again I repeatedly mentioned how weary I had become. I blamed it on stress, my busy schedule, the children, the constant clutter in my house, and a lack of sleep. I lamented the exhaustion of body, mind, and soul and would resolve to take steps to remedy the “new” problem that I’d found.

Years of identifying and re-identifying the same issues, and I’m still living in them. My house is still packed with clutter. My schedule is still insane. I’m still stressed out, the children are still insanity personified, and my sleep continues to be anything but restful. I’ve changed everything and absolutely nothing at all.

In reading the repeated pleas for peace, I slowly began to realize – the things which I thought were exhausting me are not the problems. They are the symptoms of something greater. I have forgotten what it is to know Peace. I’ve lost track of how to rest in God. What used to feel like a deep and profound relationship has become the cold familiarity of nodding acquaintances. He who was my refuge now feels more akin to someone I once knew.

Tragedy and change have brought me to where I am with God. In my hopelessness and helplessness, I fought ever onward, determined to be the strength upon which my family could lean and the wisdom which would provide answers. As more burdens and catastrophes arrived in our house, I picked them up and placed them on my shoulders, vowing to solve them all. Everyone in our household came to depend upon my strength and resolve until my responsibilities filled my entire day and most of my nights.

Furious research and constant firefighting left no time to talk to God. I don’t even know that it was a conscious decision to cut back on my prayer life, but it happened very quickly in order to make way for everything else that I knew that I had to do. I knew that God would be there waiting for me when I once again had the time for a conversation, so I let Him wait as I madly clawed through life.

And there was no peace.

It was last week that a friend sent me a blog link and I sighed in exhaustion as I was reminded of all that I already knew.

“Rest is not idleness,” it said. It’s not sitting still. It’s not even found in blessedly sweet sleep. The rest that I need, that I crave, has nothing to do with being unburdened or still. “An idle person,” it continued, “is someone not doing God’s will.”

My first instinct was to cry out “What more can I do? I’ve done all of the things He’s put before me. What else could He possibly want of me?” As I thought back over the trials of the past three years, and the last one in particular, I couldn’t imagine what else I could have done. I had cared for my family the best I knew how. I’d walked through hellfire and lived to tell the tale.

But I hadn’t done everything He’d asked of me. I couldn’t have. All of my frenetic energy and resulting exhaustion had been idleness of a sort, because I’d never taken one moment out of that continuous battle to even ask who and what I was supposed to be fighting. While I was still praying, I was no longer talking with God. I had lost sight of whose will I was supposed to be doing, so I ended up doing no one’s.

In the end, I haven’t found the answers I sought, or climbed the mountains in my path. I didn’t vanquish my stress or tame the clutter which is still overrunning our house. By not allowing prayer to be a conversation I ended up doing everything and accomplishing nothing. I found the truth in the sentiment “Restlessness is the torment of idle people.” In not seeking out and doing the will of God, I had found only torment and no rest.

Jesus told us plainly “Come to me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest.” He did not say to find the strength within ourselves, or to replenish ourselves from the well of our family and friends. All that remains now is to return to the source of my strength. I need to ask Him where He would have me go,then shake the dust from my sandals and head off in whatever direction He points me.

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