Sabbath: Greece Week 3

We have been RESTING, and it has been needed.

The past week we have spent in Thessaloniki has been about nothing else but resting and connecting in our marriage. We could have planned this trip and explored every historically significant site in Greece, and it would have been an amazing trip, but we decided to do something even more amazing: we decided to rest.

This semester at JUC can only be described as a dead sprint. Grant finished so well (straight As, and I couldn’t be prouder of him!!!), but quite literally he was finishing an assignment the night before we left for our JUC Greece trip until 2 AM. The first few days of the field study were a bit of a blur because all we could think about was how tired we were and how much we needed to reconnect. The JUC trip, by all means, was amazing, but it was also mentally, physically, and spiritually tough.

When we got to our Airbnb in Thessaloniki (they let us check in at 9:30AM instead of 3 PM, and it was a blessing), we sat on the couch until we had to leave to get dinner. You don’t realize how much you will miss a full day of jammies and a couch until you don’t have it. After that day, we have spent most of our days:

• On easy walks along the coastline of the Aegean Sea
• At lots of coffee shops — The Caravan Cafe: https://thecaravan.gr
• At pizza spots — Pizza Hood: https://www.pizzahoodskg.com 
• With a lot of couch time — we have caught up on Rings of Power, Paradise, Only Murders in the Building, the NBA, and all the Santa Clause

What I have been reflecting on and feeling while we have taken SO MUCH rest is the shame we put on ourselves when we rest. I am the worst of them — living in the lists of “I should be, I could be, I don’t know why I am not…” But living in this state has led to a desperation to just rest. The inherent confrontation is that the Lord rested, and I still feel shame about taking rest. He intentionally took time to rest. He set the precedent for rest — how and when to rest. But despite knowing that rest is “good enough” for the Lord, we still struggle with it.

We have been talking about feeling our feelings in our marriage for many years. Some of you might remember that at our wedding we talked about vowing to love all of each other’s colors (imagery for feelings — S/O to Inside Out). But the thing I have realized is that our day-to-day feelings should be somewhere in the pastel color range. Not that the feelings shouldn’t be there, but they don’t have to be visceral. A baby blue, a soft yellow, a rosy red. But without REST, these colors change. All of a sudden, the baby blues are a deep navy and the reds are crimson. The softness of feelings becomes extreme.

I think that is why the Lord gave us the command to rest. He wanted humanity to be the best versions of itself, and without true rest, we start not looking our best. At the end of the semester, Grant and I weren’t our best selves. We started having fights over small things, panicking over grades, tasks, and mistakes, and feeling distant from the Lord. It wasn’t that we wanted to feel this way, but we didn’t rest the entire semester. When there was a break in school, we were out in Israel exploring, because it felt like we “should be” or “could be” doing something in the Land.

Now that we have had a second to rest and TRULY rest, the colors have been turning back to pastels. We have been laughing more, dancing in coffee shops to Y2K anthems, talking shop about the NBA, and reading our Bible with care and love (1 Thessalonians, because when in Thessaloniki…). There is still some stress about the upcoming semester and the trip that Grant will be leading, but with this time to rest we have been able to feel those feelings, talk through them, and not let them consume us. They are soft, as they should be, and that has been the blessing of this holiday season for us.

All this to say, with the holidays and every list running through your head, I hope you find peace in the rest — that you TAKE it for yourselves. Take it so you can be your best self and be the best version of a spouse, parent, child, friend, etc., to those that you love.