REST: WHY IT IS ELUSIVE AND HOW TO REFOCUS | PART 5
Preamble
I felt like I needed to share my story of rest (back in 2016 when I presented the paper) not because my story was admirable or worthy but because it was one example and it was not always easy to practice rest. As I shared below, it started mainly out of desperation. Now, with our yearlong sabbatical in our rearview mirror, I appreciate the value of rest even more. Of course, the rest during COVID looks different from what I wrote but some of the fundamental principles remain identical. These days, rest means slowing down, paying attention to small and mundane things, and being still in my mind more specifically. I walk quite a bit more. Every day. Making coffee in the mornings for my wife and myself has become a sort of a spiritual ritual. Smelling fresh coffee grounds every morning tells me I don’t have COVID and I am alive. . . How do you rest?
My Story[1]
After I took on the role as one of the three general directors of Frontier Ventures (formerly the U.S. Center for World Mission) in late 2012, I quickly realized that the amount of stress was extremely heavy and thus not anything I’d experienced thus far in all of my ministry years combined. Thus out of sheer desperation, I had to find ways to define healthy boundaries and to recharge myself on a regular basis. Keeping Sabbath and getting myself renewed and recharged was not anything that was on the top of my list until my new role. Now it is true that I had what I now realize were unhealthy rest habits. These habits included mindlessly watching TV and sports and web surfing, not engaging with the family, often in the name of rest and self-care. Thus finding my sweet spot of rest included failures and successes, experimentation, and trial and error over time.
During this season of finding the rest that works for me, I have also spent a good deal of focus and time understanding how God made me and my unique being in Christ. Embracing who I am in God required for me to embrace my dark sides as well as light sides. Fundamentally, the pursuit revolved around my identity in Christ which includes both my unique individual identity but also a share of common universal identity as fellow followers of Christ.
My weekly routine looks something like this then. I come home a little after 5 pm during the week. When I come home, I try to come home fully. That usually means I don’t open my ministry emails after 5 pm. We have early dinner before 6 pm. Between 6 to 11 pm roughly, I have 5 hours to unwind and recharge myself. As I said earlier, my challenge is not to watch too much TV during that span. I get sucked into watching basketball games, food shows, and the discovery channel. If there is enough sunlight, my wife and I would go out and walk for an hour or exercise together in the gym. By around 10:30 pm, I am consciously slowing my brain down by reading a book, mostly on spirituality, fueling the contemplative side of me. I’ve found out that if my brain is too active thinking about ministries and solving problems, then I have a hard time falling asleep. Once a week, I play basketball at my home church, which is a highly valued rest for me.
Saturdays are usually our Sabbath day. We start the day by exercising, walking at a nearby park (5 km full circle at the Rose Bowl loop) and/or going to the gym. We talk, process, and reflect together during the walk. It serves as a connecting time between my wife and me. As with basketball and exercise, I rest by sweating and allowing my mind to focus on something that is not ministry or other work related. I sometimes make brunch for the family afterwards to have a family meal. My wife and I then usually go to a cafe (we like to explore new cafes in L.A.) to read and journal for a couple of hours. An important part of my rest revolves around gaining new insights and ideas, mostly from books. (I have been thinking about starting a blog of my own. But for now, I’ve started to post simple ideas on Instagram, monk_y_mind) It is also very typical for us to go grocery shopping together on Saturdays. This doesn't drain me. It actually energizes me, thinking about good food to eat and cooking for the family. We then come home and cook dinner. I would often barbeque something. Afterwards, I may watch some sports or some Korean variety shows on TV in the evenings. All day, I am not opening my emails. Over time, I have received far less emails on the weekends.
Furthermore, occasionally, I go on a hike in the nearby San Gabriel mountains right next to our home. Being out in nature energizes me and creates room for both solitude and silence.
Saturdays as Sabbath got shaped over time to a point where it is working and providing my wife and me with much needed rest. It includes elements of both pray and play. It is pray in the context of reading spiritual books and reflecting on the content, which feeds my contemplative side. It is also play in the context of providing me rest for body, mind, and soul through various exercises and activities.
Practical Suggestions
· Don’t just do something. Just stand there. We are who we are not based on what we do but how God created us to be.
· Discover what rest works for you. And build a routine around what works.
· Practice weekly Sabbath. Sabbath is not a luxury. It is a command.
· Promoting systemic group/organization/church culture change of embracing rest. I believe this Bangkok Forum is key to promoting this new culture of rest. Furthermore, I challenge the leaders to live this out and lead by example.
· Education of rest to local churches is vital. Obviously this point goes hand in hand with the one above. Biblical understanding is key here.
Conclusion
Rest is soul care and discipline of loving oneself, that connects ourselves to God and to others. It also directly connects our being to doing. Rest allows our being to dictate what our doing ought to be. Whether we admit it or not, we are all becoming someone or something. The question is, what are we becoming? In answering this question of becoming, we answer our response to both being and doing. The only right answer of becoming is that we ought to become like Christ. It is I who lives in Christ and Christ who lives in me. Rest assures and protects that connection to becoming. As we learn to rest, our doing is finally in tune with our being, making impact not simply out of what we do but also out of who we are. Eventually, effectiveness of our work out there is in direct correlation to our soul anchoring. Rest anchors our soul to God and creates value for others. That is emotionally healthy mission at work!
[1] Disclaimer is appropriate here. I realize that my story is based on a unique Frontier Ventures’ organizational context which is a subset of American context. It is worth repeating that we all have to cultivate and do due diligence what rest looks like for us as individuals and for our respective organizations in our cultural contexts.