Soulful Rest

This will come as shocking news but I’m not so skilled at the art of being still.

Settling in. Quieting down. Leaning into.

Getting asked why we moved here is as common as being asked What do you do? How many kids do you have? That’s a much longer answer for another day (the moving part! I think I have 4 kids) because so much vulnerability is wrapped up in that and I’m still searching for the right words.

But at the deepest life-giving root of the why…God is showing me how much restoration my soul needed. I wonder how long it would have taken me to see I was letting it shrivel up and die unless He got me still long enough to exhale and listen. To the wind gently blowing, the birds contently chirping, the sunrise being splattered across the sky.

They all model how to simply be still and content in God’s purpose for them. It’s like a fresh breeze through the soul that stirs up all the dirt. And then let’s it settle down in different places. My dirt is settling.

I won this private yoga session at a local spot in town. Now, I haven’t been to yoga in NEVER years. Knowing complete humiliation was awaiting me, I did what I always do, and dragged a friend with me. I’m not really sure why I do that to myself because I’m making it so easy for them to have the best material to use against me. After 45 minutes of nearly peeing myself, falling over, trying to touch my knees, we ended our time with  this brief 5-minute session she called restorative yoga. Y’all. Let me tell you right now. Skip the Hiawatha Yoga and the Viennese Yoga. Go DIRECTLY to the restorative yoga. It’s basically taking a nap on a mat without any kids around to wake you up while relaxing music is playing in the background. She put this bolster thing behind my back and covered me up in a blanket. I mean…I was in a REM cycle within 30 seconds. The instructor insisted it’s real purpose was not nap time but to cleanse and free the mind. To sink you into a deep relaxation. I’m now headed there every Sunday at 6:00 for nap time hour. I mean yoga.

But that’s what our souls need. Restorative yoga. And Restorative Jesus. The ONLY one who can breathe life back into our souls. To make us come alive again. To unsettle the settled-in dirt and move it around so that we can see it for what it is. To let Jesus unravel us and knit us back together. But this time in the way He always intended us to be. To free our minds from not only the lies we’ve listened to but also to free it from the truth of what our lives have been.

Settling in to see where you’ve been.

Quieting down to hand over all that dirt to Jesus.

Leaning into His steadfast truths of what He still has planned for you.

Praying that kind of soulful rest over all of you today.