Meditate

We need rest.

Want proof? Ask any parent what happens when their child doesn’t get enough sleep. I promise it isn’t pretty.

Those who do strength training will also recognize the need for rest. You can only push your muscles so much for so long before your body needs rest to rebuild and recuperate.

A good nap or a fantastic night of sleep can help you feel like a new person. Conversely, a bad one can leave you feeling half-dead.

We need rest.

My eyes felt heavy, my brain was sluggish, and I was functioning out of habit. I got the kiddos in bed, read our Bible story, and said goodnight. As I left their room, my path diverged into two choices.

I could veer right, climb in my bed, and get some much-needed rest, or go left and down the stairs. Downstairs were dishes that needed to be done, snacks I was craving, the opportunity to finish a podcast, and a video game I had been playing.

I wish I could say I made the wise decision.

When I finally climbed into my bed, it was well past bedtime, and I dreaded the early morning routine of getting my children to school on time.

This morning I came home and went straight back to bed. If I hadn’t, I knew my patience would be thin, my energy for dance this afternoon would be low, and my day would suffer. Rest is more than just recharging batteries. It is when your brain sorts and processes and when your body heals. Sleep is a time of renewal.

As I considered the importance of rest, a small verse in the Old Testament came to mind. While I have never heard a sermon on Genesis 24:63, it strikes me as significant.

“And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening.” (Genesis 24:63a ESV – Bible Gateway)

This verse is the first time we see the word “meditate” in the Bible. The Strong’s Concordance transliterates the Hebrew word “suach” and defines it as pensive musing.

Isaac went out in the cool of the day to engage in deep thought, pondering, and creative musings. This reminds me immediately of the walks and talks that Adam, Eve, and God would share in the cool of the day when they lived in the Garden of Eden.

The long day would end in restful contemplation.

God established the pattern in Genesis 2 when He rested on the seventh day and sanctified it for rest. He modeled for mankind a cycle of rest, both physically in the day-night cycle, professionally in the sanctification of the Sabbath, and internally in the habit of contemplation at the end of the day.

Perhaps the most telling is the centrality of meeting God during these times of rest.

The Old Testament is full of divine encounters through dreams and visions. The Sabbath was set apart as holy and a time to worship. God walked with Adam and Eve each evening, and the Psalmist encourages us to meditate on His word night and day.

Rest cycles are more than just physically necessary. Our hearts, mind, and spirit also need cycles of quietude and rest. Yet, our modern world seems to specialize most efficiently in interrupting this rest cycle.

Cell phones, apps, games, videos, TV, and other distractions fill our minds and lives with noise. So much so that it often makes people uncomfortable to experience silence. We need rest.

Mindfulness and meditation are buzzwords in psychologically informed culture today. Yet, a great deal of mystification still surrounds these ideas. Various research studies have shown the real physical and emotional benefits of consistent long-term mindfulness and meditation practice. It can lower anxiety, blood pressure, depression, and somatic symptoms. Brain scans have shown that long-term practice rewires the brain, improving attention span and attention-setting.

Despite the abundant empirical evidence, meditation is often misunderstood. This is primarily due to its adaptation to mystic and Eastern practices and religious connotations. While these forms of meditation are still practiced today, they do not reflect the typical concept of mindfulness and meditation in Western terminology.

The Biblical model of mediation is an excellent example. The Biblical practice of meditation was often seen as a type of prayer. Rather than focusing on emptying your mind, the goal is to fill your mind with God’s Word and think deeply about it.

Our brains are full of distractions, and we often feel guilty when we “fail” to concentrate. Mindfulness and meditation research shows that this shame-based model fails to produce results. Instead, it asserts that the individual should acknowledge the thoughts that disrupt without judgment and then refocus on the subject of the meditation.

With practice, our brain literally rewires itself to focus better. In the meantime, we consider the Word of God from various angles and sit with its various implications and applications for our life. This process moves the power of scripture from head knowledge to the deep places of our hearts.

We need these periods of rest, renewal, and recuperation.

I would challenge you to make a habit of rest. Become comfortable with silence. Quiet the distractions, train yourself to focus on God, and let Him renew a right spirit within you (Psalm 51:10 ESV  – Bible Gateway).

Research

I have sat at my kitchen table with my back curled in a bad postured hunch for days. For several days, my brain has pulsed with a screen-induced headache as I have poured over research, literature reviews, and journal articles.

I have an impending research proposal, a 15–20-page paper, the first draft of which is due in a few days. I have highlighted important information, and summarized, synthesized, and organized research for hours and hours. All of that is on top of the usual reading and writing load for class.

My shoulders are tense, and my neck aches under the strain of stress and anxiety. My sleep has suffered, and so have my self-care rituals.

Today, I have made efforts to take my health back. After taking the kids to school, I worked out, stretched, and practiced dance. When I got home, I made a healthy meal, cited a couple of articles, and summarized a couple more.

For days I have been feeling the loss of my writing. As I have said, this is as much a therapeutic exercise for me as anything. It helps me to reframe my day, process the good, and release negativity, all while exercising creativity. I miss it when I don’t make time for it.

Making time is what I am doing right now. I should be getting a shower and preparing for the rest of a very busy day, but this is important.

While academic writing tends to taint my enjoyment and desire to write, creative self-expression still benefits me greatly.

For example, I stepped on the scales for the first time in a couple of weeks yesterday. I have gained over five pounds. That was a significant gut punch; however, it was not difficult to believe. I have been sedentary during class work, eaten sparingly throughout the day, and then snacked at night before bed. I was immediately crushed with a wave of fears about “getting fat again” and uncontrollably putting on weight.

I obsessively checked my weight twice more yesterday.

However, I know the problems and patterns. After a bit of self-care today, I was able to look at reasonable and logical solutions and healthier habits and choose a way forward. I will stop eating by 8pm, replace one meal a day with a protein shake to ensure I am getting my protein, and resume my pushup regimen that had slipped with all the stress.

These are all reasonable measures I was doing before; I had simply allowed stress and anxiety to interfere.

Stress is an insidious killer that seeps in slowly, overwhelms quickly, and distracts you from the damage it is doing while robbing you of your defenses. It wreaks havoc on our bodies through hypertension, weight gain, loss of sleep, inflammation, and a whole host of other problems. It also wears our minds down, disrupts healthy thinking patterns, and creates maladaptive behaviors and thoughts. When clinicians talk about the need to find healthy ways to cope with and process stress, they are serious.

The good news is that there is a myriad of ways to reclaim your health. Here are just a few examples:

1. Start small: find something small to do that is healthy and brings you joy, is easy to accomplish, and takes little time or effort. Make it a point to do that small thing today, maybe even a few times. Momentum is key in reclaiming your health; you have to get started, and it is easier to keep going once you do.
2. Involve your body: the research shows conclusive evidence that physical activity benefits our overall health. In fact, recent research has shown that 30 minutes of elevated heart rate exercise three times a week can have a greater impact on clinical depression than leading medications. Using your body to move and process stress allows you to work it out of your system and floods your body with endorphins, making you feel better, think clearer, and give you the energy to tackle the things stressing you out. So, find something fun and physically active and get up and move.
3. Do something creative: research shows creativity activates the same brain area affected by PTSD. In other words, creativity actively works and builds the exact same processes that stress and trauma attack. Creativity allows for meaningful and enjoyable outlets for self-expression and processing and creates meaning and positive emotional associations in its place. Draw, bake, write, sing, dance, or find your own way to be creative, but use your imagination and create something!
4. Practice mindfulness: ok, so there is a lot of information, research, and applications that aid in “mindfulness practice.” Most of the resources will refer you to a meditation practice. That being said, mindfulness is simply being aware of how you are feeling, what you are thinking, and what is going on in the world around you in the present moment. Mindfulness is important because it keeps us from obsessing over the past or worrying about the future and helps us engage with what is happening now. It also lets us see the slow and subtle attack of stress and anxiety. When we are aware, we are more able to react and practice better self-care.  

I hope these suggestions give you some inspiration today. Please, let me know some of your favorite forms of self-care in the comments below.

Tai-Chi

My skin tingled in the intense sunlight. I kept my eyes closed and listened to the rhythmic breaking of the waves. The wind whipped at my clothes and brought the illusion of coolness to the air, and I breathed. In and out, slow measured breaths as I listened to the ocean, seagulls, people, and wind.

Slowly, I concentrated my awareness on myself, trying to feel centered in the space directly around me. I slowly shifted my weight from one foot to another, bringing my arms up, pushing them down, and drawing them back up again.

Around the outside of my concentration thoughts of self-conscious apprehension skittered like spiders and were quickly dismissed. The motions flowed from one to another at a deliberately slow pace and I focused on drawing my stress into a ball and pushing it from my body with my hands and replacing it with breaths of fresh ocean air.

I probably looked like an awkward goober.

I had only watched a Tai-Chi video a couple of times and learned two to three motions. I enjoyed it, but I had no business pretending like I had any idea what I was doing. If an actual practitioner had seen me on the beach that day, they likely would have smacked me, and I would have deserved it.

 I looked into tai-chi because I was having stress-induced palpitations. Someone at work threatened to bash my head in with a bat and my general level of stress had been rising anyway.

I was told I needed to find a healthy way to deal with the stress. Tai-chi was my idea, I just sucked at my follow-through.

Still, it was an introduction to the concept of practicing intentional self-awareness. Nowadays the hot word is “mindfulness” but the concept was very similar. When I closed my eyes, I would try and focus on how I was feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally. I then attempted to identify where or why those feelings might exist, accept, and dismiss the negative, and find the positive.

The warm sun, crashing waves, cool breeze, and feeling of sand between my toes helped me feel calm. I never cared much about the chakra or moving energy in your body. For me, it was about shutting out the world, focusing on what brought peace and comfort, and letting the rest drain away.

Does it actually change much? Not really.

The world is still there and still rolling on when you open your eyes again. However, it was a few minutes of peace that I enjoyed. I could choose to inject my day with a few minutes of peace and enjoyment when I wanted to. That was huge.

On another front, the practice of recognizing how I was feeling has gone a long way in living with and treating the seizures and narcolepsy that I struggle with. Symptoms that I would have never noticed without increased self-awareness have shed light on self-care practices, triggers, warning signs, symptoms, and best practices for dealing with an array of issues.

I found out today that I have a stricter time limit than I wanted when it comes to moving. It has significantly increased my stress level and I have found myself reaching for that moment of peace and calm.

Life gets busy, crazy, and chaotic and builds up momentum like a locomotive. Sometimes, we can do things to gain some control over the chaos, sometimes we do our best just to hold on. My focus right now is holding on and believing that, no matter what, God will work out all things for my family’s good.

In the meantime, I steal a few moments to remember the feeling of the sun, the sand, and the breeze as I let the stress melt away and seeds of joy replace it.

Perhaps my daughter is right, perhaps a trip to the beach wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Goodnight

The day is done, and the darkness
  Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Day is Done

I have an affinity with the night, especially as early night seems to settle in, and the sun’s last rays lighten the sky like a pleasant memory. The aromatic warmth of day still clings to the Earth and cool air brings refreshment on a breeze. Crickets, frogs, and nocturnal denizens begin their complex symphony of welcome to the night and rest falls like a comforting blanket across your lap.

The quiet helps me think beyond the concerns of the busy day. There are no pressing restraints, no scheduling concerns, just intimacy, privacy, and calm. My enjoyment of night often makes going to bed more difficult. I lose long moments staring at the moon, searching the stars, or just gazing into the depths of space and I smile.

My teenage years are chalked full of nighttime walks down little country roads, neighborhood streets, and Island beaches. As the world emptied of distractions and cooled conversations deepened and flowed more freely. Lost in the fellowship of a good conversation miles could slip by unnoticed.

Perhaps, wherever you are tonight, the day has left you tired and worn. I encourage you tonight to go outside. Find a safe, quiet, and private place and listen to the night. Breathe in the air, the sense of refreshment, and calm and breath out the stress and push of the day. Feel the tension release and melt from your body.

Watch the sky, what do you see? Is the moon brightly visible? Are the stars spread out like a blanket or muted and scarce? Do you see the blinking lights of an airplane as it carries travelers across the sky?

What do you hear? Are there crickets, owls, or frogs? Are there sirens and street noise? What background lullaby serenades the night around you?

Now, do me a favor and try to find the most poetic (heartfelt) way you can describe what you are experiencing and the memories and feelings that your senses connect you with. Think of adjectives and adverbs and look for descriptive words you do not usually use.

Let the night swirl around you and listen for those things you have already picked out. Close your eyes and focus on them one by one. Do they paint a picture in your mind, or dance across your sense like a merry play?

Finally, if you dare, could you share your thoughts with the rest of us?

You see, anxiety and worry melt away when we bask in the enjoyment of God’s glory. When we appreciate and relish in God’s beauty and masterwork and give Him the glory, we find wells of peace deep inside.

When all the world wraps itself in night
and settles down to rest
when nature plays a soothing lullaby,
and calm and quiet fill the air
When the bustle of the day becomes a crawl
we are reminded of the one who made and guards it all.

I pray you find rest and peace tonight.

Simple Pleasures

I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Now, I realize this is not the most sophisticated cuisine to profess your love for, but I always have. Jiff peanut butter has been a staple in my family since I can remember. My mom would also say that peanut butter and toilet paper were the two areas you did not skimp on.

Whether creamy or crunchy, with jelly or a banana, I loved peanut butter sandwiches. In fact, when I went to India on a two-month mission trip we ate PB&J sandwiches nearly every day for lunch. It was the one food option I never got tired of.

The only thing that could enhance the enjoyment of a good peanut butter sandwich was a glass of milk, or better yet, Ovaltine. My best friend in High School introduced me to Ovaltine, I have been a fan ever since.

My mother’s nighttime snack tonight was apple slices and peanut butter. There is a large part of me that would call that a far better dessert than most other options.

Food is unique in the human experience as a universal source of comfort and simple pleasure. This is partly due to the cultural significance of eating, partly biology, and partly because of our basic need to eat. Yet, the fact remains, some foods just make you feel good.

I personally believe that the simple pleasure of good food is part of the joy of a life well-lived. We just have to learn the wisdom and self-control to practice moderation.

Sometimes I think modern depression levels are so high because we have forgotten how to find and enjoy simple pleasures. Think about movies, use to a story read across radio waves captures the attention of families across the nation, now movies must find new and bigger special effects to draw an audience.

Our technology and societal complexity have offered so many blessings and so much convenience, but we lose a lot too. Is it any wonder addiction rates have skyrocketed? People are desperate to feel like they are truly alive, and it leads to risky behaviors.

Yet, the same simple pleasures surround us today that have for generations. Things like a favorite food that carries comfort and memories, the beauty and serenity of nature, good conversation with a friend, or a moving story. These are just a few examples of things that often don’t cost any extra to take the time to enjoy.

That is the key. Taking the time to enjoy them. In psychology, there is this concept known as mindfulness. To demystify the concept let me simplify the definition to “being fully aware of and present in the moment.”

The idea is that so much of our lives are distracted. We scroll through social media, watch videos, read the news, listen to podcasts or music and our lives blur around us. We just pass the time. Mindfulness is the practice of intentionally making ourselves aware of the moment we are in and what we are experiencing, feeling, and aware of.

If we practice mindfulness with intentionality, I think we could rediscover a great deal of joy in life. We do this in magic little moments as it is. Think about those select few songs that can arrest your attention when you hear them. They are grabbing your attention back to the present. Think about a food that you love so much that you close your eyes and try and soak in every sensation as you eat. Think about those memories that are razor-sharp in your mind that you can see clearly. These are moments where you were fully present and aware of the moment.

The reality is, we can choose to practice this mindfulness daily and if we were to do so with the intention of enjoying some of these simple pleasures, I believe we would see an equal increase in joy.

When is the last time you closed your eyes, held your arms out, and felt the breeze as it ran across your skin and moved every single hair? If you do, I bet you will smile.

The thing is life is pretty cool. God made an awesome place for us to live in and filled it with things and experiences to enjoy. Don’t forget to take the time to really slow down, find those simple pleasures, and enjoy the gifts He has given us.

If you are curious allow me to give you a very simple mindfulness exercise as an example.

Close your eyes and breath in for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four, and then slowly breath out to a count of four. Repeat this process a couple of times.

Now, concentrate on what you are physically feeling right now. Feel your feet pressed against the floor. Feel your body in your chair and where there is pressure. What stands out? What is one thing you could do to bring some comfort or pleasure right now?

Take a moment to do it, but again, slowly take time to enjoy it as you do.

Not everything has to be major, even putting on soft and comfy socks can feel luxurious if you take the time to feel the fabric as it slips over your skin and the warm comfort of it hugging your feet.

Being aware of all those little simple pleasures can build momentum in your thought patterns and help change your focus.

If nothing else, we could all use a little more enjoyment in our lives, right?