For When You Are Afraid and Don't Know How to Rest

A photo of a bunch of prayer candles - the only light comes from them, everything else is darkness.
DDP

Blessed are we who admit,
"God, I'm afraid."

Blessed are we who confess,
"I don't know how to rest."

This is an excerpt from a blessing written by Kate Bowler, penned specifically for these, as they say, 'uncertain times.'

The whole thing is lovely, but I deeply appreciate these two stanzas in particular.

Admitting you're afraid? That's scary as heck! Now there's the original fear, and a whole extra fear of being vulnerable on top of it. Who wants that? And yet, when we admit our feelings, whatever they are, that's when we open the door for blessings. The blessing of support, help, love, companionship, or understanding.

The sentence "I don't know how to rest" hit me hard.

I have actually been getting better at finding rest in my life over the past few years, and this is a reminder: for whatever reason, I (and so many of us) have no idea how to actually rest.

As a collective, it seems that we know how to be so busy we don't realize what we're really feeling and we know how to numb out. But rest? That actually rejuvenates us? That's harder, somehow. We don't know what will actually make us feel better.

But we can learn. We can get help. We can be brought to rest.


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