It was April of 2003 when I received a letter in the mail informing me that I would be the head usher at the 2003 graduation ceremony owing to the fact that I was sitting #2 in my class of 500 for GPA. This may sound shocking, but this was indeed the first time I had ever realized people competed for such a thing, and I was honored....and suddenly very competitive. My friends in the top 10 each concocted a schedule for senior year that was fuller than a fat kid's plate on Thanksgiving, giving up lunch hours and study halls to take 7 AP classes. I decided I could fit 6 AP classes in my schedule, and I still had to go without lunch.
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Fast forward to late September 2003, 5 weeks into my Senior year of high school. I was walking down the hall on the 3rd floor toward my AP Biology class. I had just spent the past hour in homeroom completing the homework for this class, after staying up until the wee hours of the morning trying to figure out Calculus. It was hot in the hallway and people were talking and laughing; some girls were wearing normal clothes while I was wearing my senior sweatshirt for the 8th day in a row and I was not sure if I had brushed my hair or teeth that morning. As I walked my heart began to pound and I felt the familiar sinking feeling of dread as I inched toward the classroom. As I began to think about how the class would go, I found myself slightly out of breath; without even thinking, my feet turned my body to walk slowly down a stairwell. They walked all the way into the Nurse's office and onto a cot in the back. I then had a full-on panic attack: hyperventilating breathing, gut-wrenching sobs, pounding heart, shaking hands, curled up in the fetal position on the cot. The nurse patted my back reassuringly and gave me oxygen and water until my body exhausted itself. I then lay comatose for hours on the cot. The nurse came in multiple times to tell me I needed to go to class, but I did not respond; I couldn't respond. I was completely fried, and I stared at the cookies-and-cream patterned brick walls without thought or intention or energy. Eventually, the guidance counselor came and was able to coax me into a seated position. She helped me rearrange my schedule to a more reasonable level, and I was able to drop Biology right then and there. I had never failed or quit or dropped anything in my life until that point, and I felt weak, guilty, and fearful. What if this altered my ability to get into the perfect college? What if I'm not salutatorian? Who am I letting down? Are there really things in this world I am not capable of doing?
The familiar story
This past weekend, our high school youth went to Surfside Beach to spend time in Sabbath Rest for 36 hours. On Friday night as I gathered the group together and told them that Saturday was going to be dedicated to rest - rest from homework, from stress, from all the pressures of life- I could see the twisted faces of my youth. As we sat on the beach, I saw some sneaking their required reading books out to the beach. Some went back to the beach house early to work out complex math problems. Some held out from their homework but felt guilty and tormented doing it.
As I sat surrounded by students tearfully talking about the pressures they feel and the anxiety that suffocates them and their fear that rest will bring failure, my heart went back to that day in September 2003 when I knew the very same crushing pressure. My heart breaks for our youth, who strive for success at the cost of their own sanity, who feel they have no choice but to compete in this cut-throat world for a place at the table, who scramble for an allusive sense of contentment that seems to flit further and further away.
What are we doing? How can we live in this world without being crushed by it?
Because it's biblical...
I hear on a weekly basis someone who is upset that we now have sporting competitions on Sunday mornings just as often as Saturday mornings or that the homework assigned for Sundays is too much. This statement inevitably means to hearken back to a time when Sundays were for church and family and not much else, and society has changed.
I'm not proposing that we go back to the good ol' days or to the 1950s or whenever you think the world was great. In some ways, there is a tremendous amount of value for our youth to learn to live out their faith in a world that isn't conforming mindlessly to a Christian perspective. I'm also not proposing that we protest Sunday morning soccer games because it makes us anti-cultural and special. I'm not proposing that the church is required in some way to be a counter-cultural movement.
What I know is that scripture shows us that rest is important if not essential to our daily life.
Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that the had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from the work he had done in creation.
-Genesis 2.1-3
In the first seven days of creation, God dedicates a day to creating darkness and light. God takes the full day to create the stars and moon and to create the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. And among these special days, God chooses one to rest and enjoy presence, being, and creation.
If God doesn't see God's self as too important, too powerful, too influential to take a day of rest, who are we to say we don't need rest?
We need this, as adults, and our children need it. Our bodies weren't built out of stainless steel or titanium; our minds are not computers constantly plugged into the wall with an endless source of energy; our hearts are not built with flexible material that will never break if pushed hard enough. We are made with muscles that strain when they are tired, that need a constant supply of food, water, and yes, rest, in order to function. We are made with synapses and neurons that cannot fire at warp speed every minute of every day without causing seizure or anxiety attacks. We are made with hearts like rubber bands that can be stretched with emotion, but break when the strain is too much to bear. It is not coincidental to me that we seem obsessed with super-humans in the entertainment industry right now:
Who doesn't want to be Captain America who can be beaten but won't stay down?
Who doesn't want to be Thor, who is mostly not human at all but rather a god?
Who wouldn't want to be a vampire who can heal itself immediately or a werewolf who can run at lightning speed?
We are surrounded by images of super humans because we are longing to be people who do not need rest. But that is not the truth of who we are, and when we try to push ourselves without rest, we are essentially saying that we have more energy than God.
We need this, as adults, and our children need it. Our bodies weren't built out of stainless steel or titanium; our minds are not computers constantly plugged into the wall with an endless source of energy; our hearts are not built with flexible material that will never break if pushed hard enough. We are made with muscles that strain when they are tired, that need a constant supply of food, water, and yes, rest, in order to function. We are made with synapses and neurons that cannot fire at warp speed every minute of every day without causing seizure or anxiety attacks. We are made with hearts like rubber bands that can be stretched with emotion, but break when the strain is too much to bear. It is not coincidental to me that we seem obsessed with super-humans in the entertainment industry right now:
Who doesn't want to be Captain America who can be beaten but won't stay down?
Who doesn't want to be Thor, who is mostly not human at all but rather a god?
Who wouldn't want to be a vampire who can heal itself immediately or a werewolf who can run at lightning speed?
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We are surrounded by images of super humans because we are longing to be people who do not need rest. But that is not the truth of who we are, and when we try to push ourselves without rest, we are essentially saying that we have more energy than God.
Some life lessons...
I think the worst lesson I learned as a child was that I can do anything if I put my mind to it and work hard enough. It has created in me this sense that I am all-powerful, and that if I don't accomplish everything, I am in some way a failure. I believe it is important for our youth to learn three major things about rest:
#1: You can't do anything without rest.
It's true that the possibilities are endless in our country: you can be whatever you want to be. But when you are overworked and under-rested, you literally can't be as functional as you could be. I had a student once who ran and ran and ran from sun-up to sun down. She played violin, had lead roles in the musicals, danced ballet, tap and jazz, was on the swim team, was class president, taught Sunday School, and had 2 lifeguarding jobs. I remember going to her violin recital and hearing her struggle through her solo. Her face was red and eyes heavy as she stumbled through the notes. I felt so sorry for her; it was obvious that she hadn't had the time to commit to the violin because she had committed so much time to other things. She wasn't able to be really great or really present in any area of her life; instead she was mediocre at a lot of things.
It might seem like if you don't have 300 extracurricular activities and a perfect GPA under your belt, you'll not get into the college of your choice. Westminster College was at the bottom of my choices when I first started looking at schools, but it was where God ordained me to go. I believe the same is true for each of our youth: God has something in mind for our youth and it's better than the best laid plans we could put together. Our over-commitment and exhaustion do nothing to help us live into God's plan for our lives.
#2: God not only commands rest; God sets an example of rest for us.
Not only does God rest after creation, but we have several accounts of Jesus retreating from the crowd to be alone or with a few disciples in prayer. Jesus regularly balances rest and prayer with the hard work of ministry. If you think you have a lot of pressure to succeed, try being the Son of God. It might even be tempting for us to think, how many more people could Jesus have cured and reached and saved if he never rested, if he put all of his time and energy into being with God's people and doing his work?!?! But God knows something that we do not: without rest, the ministry of Jesus does not happen. Without rest, Jesus burns out long before he makes it to the cross. Without rest, Jesus could lose sight of the end goal. Think about Jesus' last actions before his arrest: he goes to the Mount of Olives with his disciples and spends time in prayer. And this is what he says:
Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.
-Luke 22.42
Because of rest and prayer, Jesus is able to commit himself to the ultimate task of sacrifice on the cross. Because Jesus takes the time to experience and acknowledge God's presence, he is able to fully let go of his own will in order to follow the will of God.
#3: You can't love others if you aren't taking care of yourself.
In the second greatest command according to Jesus, he says that we are called to love others as we love ourselves. There is something ultimately true about this statement. If we treat ourselves with love and respect and kindness, we fill our souls with these things. We then have an abundant treasure store with which to share with our neighbors. If, however, we treat ourselves with abuse, impatience, and frustration, we fill our souls with those things. We then have an empty warehouse, occupied only by negative emotions, from which to share with our neighbors. Even our kind actions in this case can be filled with bitterness, resentment, and anger.
From my personal experience, I know that when we are pushing ourselves to the point of mental breakdowns, anxiety attacks, and even just tears, we are not being kind and loving to ourselves. We are holding our selves to unrealistic success, and we abuse ourselves when we perceive that we have failed. This is not what God intends for us. We are beloved children of the living God, adopted and grafted into God's family, called and claimed by name by the Lord who loves and cares for us deeply. Who are we to abuse what God has called "very good"?
And so this week, I challenge us to seek rest, to seek sabbath, to seek presence. On Sunday, we greeted each other with the Hebrew saying, "Shabbat Shalom" which means peace to you on your Sabbath. Shalom peace is a kind of internal peace, one that comes from the knowledge and presence of the living God. It is similar to the yogic saying, "Namaste" which wishes peace from my heart to yours. I wish for you that you find Shalom through your Shabbat this week, and every week.
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