Permission to Rest

 

 

I’m not able to fully rest at home.

 

Last Wednesday I woke with a pinched nerve and recovered just in time to lead a Friday/Saturday retreat. At home there were mounds of laundry. Tiny, flat, butterscotch-colored seeds had fallen from the birch next door and littered across our white tile floors. Everywhere I looked there was something to do.

 

On Sunday afternoon Andrew took me out on an introverts’ date. The kids are big enough to fend for themselves every once in a while. He strung up a hammock on two trees beside the Chattahoochee.  I read and listened. He fished. I could hear the whine of his line as he pulled it out for a longer cast. He climbed the bank occasionally to give me a kiss and a fishing report, “It’s gruelling out there today.” I stay in the hammock with my book. The fabric of the eno was so thin I could feel a breeze underneath me as well as over.

 

A bird  above me sounded like someone calling their dog, one high note, five whistles. The river gurgle was low like a boiling pot. Kayakers called to each other as they paddled past. There’s a suburban pool somewhere across the river; I could hear muffled pool music and children’s screams.

 

 

It was overcast. I could smell the mix of mud and river after a week of rain. The smell reminded me of canoeing down the Mohican River in northern Ohio as a teen. Masses of Amish teens on Rumspringa floated down the river babying floating igloos full of Miller.

I didn’t need ecstatic. I just needed calm. Quiet. I was perfectly content in the hammock. For hours. No one needed me there.

That afternoon I brought a new book. Pretty much everything my friend @christiepurifoy recommends I know I’ll enjoy, Anthony Doerr’s, Four Seasons in Rome. He and his wife navigated foreign life in Italy with twin newborns for one year. He chronicles that messy year with the eye of a artist and the sleeplessness of a young parent. Beautifully written. It’s almost as good as a seat across the Atlantic. Almost.

 

At that point I was too weary for an adventure. Reading about someone else’s adventure, holding an infant, overlooking the domes of smoggy Rome felt just right.

 

I’ve been talking to other women about this. Many of us don’t rest at home. There’s always a need. Always.

 

And it’s not just moms. I remember talking to a seasoned writer, Linda Andersen, right after her husband retired saying that just hearing him padding from one room to another kept the words from flowing. She asked a local library if she could write in one of their rooms. Once a week she scheduled a writing day and sat alone in the sealed room. The words began to flow again.

 

Linda and I lived fifteen minutes apart down a lakeside road in Western Michigan. Linda knew the importance of a ministry of solitude and would invite a woman over to her cottage once a week. She and her husband would open the door for their guest and then leave for five hours. Five hours of drawn out cashmere quiet.

 

Linda had a guest room stocked with retreat books and a futon with a chunky knit throw. She invited me over one day, my belly big with my third. I rolled over on the futon and spent most of the morning napping. She had set a tray of lunch things on a round, white-painted table, tomatoes from their garden cut in a circle on a white plate. If you stared out the front window just right you could see a swan swimming in a small pond across the street. I was sure I had found a secret portal to heaven. She wrote numerous books giving women permission to rest. Try Interludes: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Personal and Spiritual Rest first.

 

I know some friends who get out their calendars, schedule day retreats, and then switch houses. Others look for a retreat house in their area and sign themselves in for a day. I’m a firm believer that people at every stage of life need a full Sabbath. Full rest. Full stop. Sunday I found mine in a hammock beside the banks of the Chattahoochee.

 

My husband climbed the bank of the river and gave me the fishing report. One rainbow. One brown trout. They were just not feeding that afternoon. I decided to stay in my cocoon.

 

 

Do you have trouble resting at home? How do you schedule rest?