Highways and no interruptions: Invitations to rest
Her body was tired.
Normally on days like this she would have headed up to her local coffee shop – a place where she finds respite and comfort in the rich and familiar flavors as well as the hospitality of those who greet and serve her. It is a place where nobody asks anything of her except What can I get you?
This time, she longed for something more.
More space, less interruption.
So instead of heading up to the coffee shop close to her home, Laura Murray found herself on the highway driving to the shop’s second location miles away.
She wondered and reflected.
“Why do I want to be on a highway? I realized that even at red lights I check my phone and on a highway you can’t or you shouldn’t. There was something inside of me telling me that I didn’t even want the small interruption of feeling like I had to check my phone. I wanted to focus on one thing – not five things.”
Rev. Dr. Laura Murray is a trained spiritual director, coach and former pastor. She is also a ministry partner of Retreat House Spirituality Center. One of Murray’s passions is helping ministry leaders develop healthy rhythms of life.
As someone who holds space for others in but not limited to spiritual direction, coaching sessions and family life, Murray is candid about her need for self-care practices and routines where she has a chance to recalibrate - connecting with herself, God and others. And to borrow her words - she knows first-hand the tyranny of the urgent on all fronts.
Her brave-vulnerability and sacred story sharing offers some solidarity in the high volume and velocity pace in which many of us live. In the below offering, you’re invited to listen and read some of Murray’s experience.
Consider ways in which God, the Divine, the Holy, might be inviting you to rest and to trust.
Letting loose ends stay loose
Like many of us, Murray’s to-do list never truly ends. She can pause it, but there is always something to be done. What would it look like to rest in God?
Murray: A few weekends ago, I had the sense that I needed to tie up loose ends. As I sat in worship on Sunday, I heard God say “you actually need to allow yourself to be untangled. You need to rest.”
And then I had an image of me in God’s hands just resting there. And the other image I have is Christmas lights all tangled up. It doesn’t help to untangle the lights. It helps to let the lights to sit and let them kind of fall. Then you can see where the gaps are and tend to those to untangle the strand. And I hear God saying, “You are still enough. The lights aren’t untangled yet, and that’s okay.”
Reflection from Retreat House: What loose ends might God be inviting you to let alone? Name those. Ask God to come into the gap of time you might have if you let those to-do’s wait, or rest. Do any images come to mind? Invite those images into your prayer.
Who needs to let you heal
During a spiritual direction session where Murray was the directee the Holy Spirit brought her clarity. She knew her knee injury had prevented her from walking and swimming - activities that serve as spiritual practices for her, a place to ground and be in God. She wasn’t frustrated by her injury. She realized she was frustrated by the people who wouldn’t let her heal, the ones who were always needing something. What would it look like to rest in God?
Murray: I have finally gotten to a place where I actually want to rest. I know it is necessary to my wholeness. My challenge now is figuring how to communicate to those in my world that I need rest? I need to ice my knee, but it is hard to find the time. I believe it goes back to my body. I hear God say, I value your physical body. And then I realize that I haven’t been valuing my body. I’ve been using it.
Reflection from Retreat House: Who in your life do you need to communicate your need for space, space to heal? Invite those names and faces into your prayer. Ask God to show you how to navigate these words and relationships.
Spaces that hold you
Society and culture talks a lot about living a balanced life. Murray explains that this language suggests that it is all on the individual to create this perfectly balanced life. That is a lot of pressure. She prefers thinking of living a centered life. When we think of living out of a center, there’s a sense that we are living out of our identity or purpose. In other words, what are you called to do?
A centered life has to come from outside of us even though it includes us. This includes spaces to hold us. She believes people, communities, practices and actual spaces can help us live centered.
Murray: In addition to people and places holding us, creation holds us. It is always holding us. I am sitting here now looking at the big tree in my front yard. I can sit under it after our call, and it can absorb things that I need it to absorb. I remember leading a retreat in Florida. I was taking a walk on the beach. I was on the sidewalk, noticing the beauty all around me. It sort of took my breath away. I was really seeing. I thought ah, I get to behold this beauty, and I got this sense that creation was holding me up. We need to lean into this spaces that can hold us.
Reflection from Retreat House: Who are the people, the places or the spaces that have the capacity to absorb what you need to let go of? Name them. If there are none that come to mind, ask God to absorb them, to show you.
Let the body lead the way
Sometimes our bodies know what we need before our minds. If we listen, our bodies give us language. They help us to understand and name our experience.
Murray: My body was longing for a place of goodness. Coffee shops are a place of beauty and goodness for me. I am not the one creating or hosting or doing in this places and spaces. Someone else takes care of that. A few weeks ago when I decided to drive on the highway to the coffee place further away, my body kind of just steered in that direction. It wanted to rest. It needed time away.
This same day I knew I was sad. I didn’t know why. My body longed for beauty, to be held. My gut told me to go to the coffee shop. I kept wondering why are you tired? And, during my uninterrupted drive on the highway - the knowing came to me — I was brokenhearted. I now knew how to tend to the tiredness, because I knew the cause. I had named it.
Reflection from Retreat House: Naming our experiences can help us release the weight that they carry. What longings do you carry in your body? Name those and spend time in prayer asking God how God wants to heal any of those places? What experiences might want/need to be named?
Murray says she sees a connection between allowing the wisdom of our bodies to lead us to a place of understanding.
“I think again about the strand of the Christmas lights image. If we let them sort of sit and rest, space will open up on their own. We can receive from a resting place rather than a wrestling place.”
If we allow our bodies to rest, clarity will many times come without us having to think through or analyze. We must leave space for this to happen. We are invited to trust that God will show us what we need to know. In these moments of giving ourselves space and rest, we are invited into a deeper understanding of ourselves and God’s love for us.
How is God inviting you to rest? “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
Rev. Dr. Laura Murray is a spiritual director, retreat leader, author and coach. Learn more or send Laura a note! Read one of Laura’s scripture meditations on Rest.
This article was written by Emily Turner Watson. She is a trained spiritual director, storyteller and writer. Connect with her here - she would love to hear from you! In the midst of unpacking some boxes and preparing July blogs, she discovered a note from her kindergarten teacher reading “A for being a good rester!” It even included a smiley face. Can you imagine getting applauded for resting?! {also, yes, her mother kept ALOT of keepsakes from our childhood}. Please receive this apple as a reminder that it is okay to rest. :)