I sat on a dock on the coast of Southern Maine alone with my thoughts. I held an ice cream cone in one hand and struggled to eat it before it melted down my wrist. The wind coming off the sea pulled at the baseball hat hiding my ratty hair. It was quiet save for the occasional call of a seagull and the lapping of the sea against the dock. “When was the last time I ate an ice cream cone in complete solitude?” I wondered. “Actually, when was the last time I ate an ice cream cone at all?” My husband was across the way, perusing a tiny port gift shop in Georgetown which didn’t, as it turns out, allow food or drink. Bully for me, I thought, as I sat in a lone Adirondack chair facing a smattering of tiny islands and lobster traps and the open sea.
Earlier that morning, I’d convinced my husband to hike the perimeter of a tiny island reported to be good for beachcombing. Nearly a half mile through our hike, the sky opened with a soaking downpour. We were far from our car, pockets full of shiny black, iridescent muscle shells, so we climbed the rocky shore to the treed path to wait out the storm. An hour later, we trudged into a Starbucks in a nearby town, soaked to the skin, and ordered coffees to warm ourselves while our clothes dried only slightly. The hat I purchased at the lobster shack in Georgetown turned out to be wholly necessary after wringing out my hair in the Starbucks bathroom.
Later, on the dock with my dissolving ice cream cone, I closed my eyes against the ocean breeze, and took some deep breaths. The rain had moved inland, and a weak sun warmed my face.
It has been a year, I thought.
And it has been a long time since I’ve had nothing to do other than sit in solitude and enjoy one of life’s most basic pleasures. I am at once six-years-old and forty-two, slurping the drippy edges of my pink peppermint ice cream cone with unabashed pleasure. This year has been full, too full, maybe. Work travel, writing, book publishing, parenting, church ministry, the reawakening of my chronic pain disease after a two-month remission, one son’s back surgery, the other son’s neurodivergence diagnosis, and well…just living—it has been a more stressful year than what’s normal for us, I’d say.
I’ve not done well with the practice of solitude or rest this year because life simply hasn’t afforded me the chance or the pleasure. On the dock, I remembered the mounting stress making itself known in all sorts of strange ways before and after my son’s nine-hour spine surgery. There were two ocular migraines which fractured my vision into a kaleidoscope of glimmering mosaics. I thought I was having a stroke the first time it happened, but the skull-crushing pain that followed when my vision cleared sent me to bed for hours afterwards, and I knew this was likely the result of compounded stress. It happened again a day after we got home from the hospital with our son. He was like a 6’1” infant needing to be adjusted and turned every twenty minutes, needing help with every basic movement. Again, my vision fissured, the world turning to glowing, broken glass. The pain was indescribable. I had no choice but to give myself to it fully.
That seemed so far away on the dock near the lobster traps and the haze burning off after the coastal storm. There was something in my head telling me this was wasteful, an annoying voice telling me I wasn’t being useful. This sitting, thinking, eating an ice cream cone, doing nothing but existing and breathing. So indulgent. So wasteful.
But, was it? We are not machines, not automatons who work and serve and work and serve without the need to come up for air occasionally. Rest is something we push to the edges of our peripheral vision, hoping the need for it eventually dissolves. Rest is something we often feel guilty for, something to chide ourselves for being so indulgent when the world is on fire and needy for our presence and work and ministry. Particularly as one who lives in the world of local church ministry as well as speaking and writing ministry, everything can feel spiritually urgent all of the time. And, it is.
But you and I are not solely responsible for righting every wrong, for addressing every topic, for responding to every single need. There’s a whole church, a whole Body, a whole kingdom of God at work. And what’s more, there’s a sovereign God who never needs sleep, never needs deep breaths of ocean air, never needs to step away to regain composure and perspective. This God, He is holding everything together, with or without you. And He gives sleep to the ones He loves (Ps. 127:1-2). He is not anxiously waiting for you to wake up from a good night’s sleep so the kingdom work can continue. He has chosen to include you in His work because He knows it will bring you joy to obey Him, but He doesn’t need you to pretend like you don’t need rest, like you are invincible, like migraines and panic attacks and burnout aren’t real. He has created you to rest and modeled it for you at creation. Not because He needed to rest but because you do, and He knew you’d struggle to admit it. In this way, rest is obedience. It is trust. It is self-awareness and God-awareness.
He gives us sleep because we get tired. He gives us salty ocean breezes and glorious mid-hike rainstorms and melting ice cream cones because we need respite and glimmers of joy that pull us towards the coming joy of eternity. He gives us mental rest because we are humans and not machines. He gives us opalescent muscle shells to invoke wonder in creation rather than the numbness that comes through chronic, electronic scrolling. He gives us naps and novels and morning walks and sunrises and rainstorms and ice cream cones and friends and music. He gives us avenues of rest if only we will take them.
When the plane descended into Memphis a day later, I gripped my husband’s arm and braced myself for the drive back to Missouri and our kids and work and church—for reentry. Life has continued at breakneck speed since returning from our twentieth anniversary trip to Maine, and sometimes when I am standing outside in the mosquito-thick humidity of Southern Missouri, I miss the dock and the breeze and the stillness of rest. It’s been too easy to begin running the path towards complete burnout yet again. It only took a night or two at home to recover my knack for spinning all the plates and anxious thoughts in the middle of the night. But rest is a rhythm to practice at home, too. We need it more than once every ten years. It’s not privilege as much as it is a command. An admittance that you are an image-bearer, not the Image-Maker. I need to rest. You need to rest. To be obediently still. To know that God is God, not you, not me. So, I’m closing this laptop. I’ll turn off the devices, take a walk, read a book, sit and pray, take a nap on a Saturday afternoon without feeling guilty or indispensable to the turning of the world. The Lord holds its rotations and revolutions. I can rest because He is at the helm, accomplishing His purposes in ways I can’t imagine. I can sleep because He loves me. And so can you.
God has created you to rest and modeled it for you at creation. Not because He needed to rest but because you do, and He knew you’d struggle to admit it. Share on X
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.