Wonderstruck (8 page)

The shift in disposition was noticeable. With a Tigger-like personality, most mornings I bounce out of bed ready to conquer the world. Suddenly I felt like the world had conquered me. At two in the afternoon, still wearing holiday cherry-red and lime-green flannel pajamas that should have long been packed away, I confessed my emptiness to Leif.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I said.

“Let’s take the rest of the day off,” he advised. “We’ll crawl into bed and watch movies all afternoon.”

“I don’t think you heard me,” I clarified. “I
really
can’t do this anymore.”

A quick self-inventory suggested something deep down inside was broken. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stomach another deadline, though I sat before a stack of projects. Or that I wasn’t sleeping well, though I tried everything I knew to sleep through the night. Or that I felt smothered by the onslaught of demands that popped into my inbox each day. Or that I sensed the shallowness of being consumed by a hundred meaningless activities. Or that I could no longer shove away the isolation that comes from being only partially present to everyone in my life—including God.

My heart felt singed around the edges. Everyday challenges seemed insurmountable. I struggled to find the energy to care, let alone attempt to change the situation. Anxiety and frustration amassed until I felt trapped; in the darkness, I saw no way of escape.

I knew I needed to talk to someone who could pinpoint the source of my exhaustion, but I cringed with feelings of embarrassment and shame. Would the admission that I needed help certify that I was permanently broken, disturbed, losing my mind?

I disregarded the voices of disgrace. With the assistance of a friend, I found a Christian counseling center. Leif and I drove to the first session together. As we pulled into the parking lot, I discovered, much to my chagrin, I’d be sorting through my
emotional baggage at a strip mall. The walls of the tiny offices held a few watercolor paintings, the rooms plainly decorated with a mishmash of home décor, the most notable piece a basket of faded silk flowers. Every bookshelf jammed tight with books, the office smelled like animal crackers—which turned out to be the complimentary afternoon snack. The counselor invited me to have a seat on the dilapidated black leather couch. I chuckled at the stereotype.

Leif sat beside me during each session, adding insights as the counselor prodded me to unpack my childhood, adolescence, and current situation. We didn’t leave a topic unexplored—no hope, no dream, no disappointment. The first day was largely uneventful, but halfway through the second, the counselor said something that sparked me like an electric current.

“Margaret, you don’t have any boundaries,” he told me.

“That’s not true,” I protested. “Everyone has some boundaries or we’d all run around naked eating cheeseburgers all the time.”

The counselor offered a big loopy grin before breaking into a laugh, infusing the conversation with much-needed levity.

“Well, yes, we all have some boundaries, but do you realize you don’t have any
healthy
boundaries?” he asked.

Running through the various categories of my life, including work, friends, family, and free time, I knew he was right.

“Have you heard of the book
Boundaries
by Henry Cloud and John Townsend?” he asked.

“I’ve read it twice,” I answered.

“Great,” he said. “But you haven’t put a single thing they’ve written into practice.”

I had my work cut out for me—not just because I was required to watch two hours of
Boundaries
lectures per night in addition to finishing mounds of homework but also because the new terrain of learning to say no was foreign, steep, and downright scary. The counselor roused me, asking me to become alert to the work God wanted to do in my life; I responded with hesitance, wishing I could roll over, pull the blanket over my head, make everything go away. Despite my reluctance, I awakened to the harsh truth that developing a healthy sustainability for life was as much a mystery to me as string theory.

We discussed my upbringing during the sessions together. I began to notice a pattern. My inability to create margins traced back to my childhood in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where my parents owned a mom-and-pop surf shop. They stayed busy advising customers on the best choice among surfboards, rehanging bikinis, and managing quirky employees. I learned early on that owning your own business required extra hours on the job. Working every day of the week, more than a dozen hours a day, was standard procedure. To balance their work ethos, my parents developed a habit of taking extended breaks to escape on a boat where they sailed away from the relentless demands of the surf shop. This upbringing taught me to never be afraid of a hard day’s work or a long day’s play.

Along the way, I failed to develop healthy life rhythms. Many find the workplace provides an opportunity to practice establishing good personal borders, but I chose to follow in my parents’ footsteps as an entrepreneur. To make matters worse, I adored my work and found great satisfaction in my job. Instead of learning to saunter through life at a sustainable pace, I lunged forward at breakneck speeds that left me worn, weary, and winded.

The pace of life became a place of torment. My life was a smoking treadmill I’d been running on at level ten speed at an incline of ten since childhood. I didn’t know anything different. This explained why I felt so tired and trapped—why even after eight hours of sleep I still woke up exhausted, why the smallest demands of life loomed large, why I felt stuck without any reprieve, why I had awakened feeling like a faint wisp of my former self.

Sitting in the counselor’s office, my emotions felt like an oil fire with smoke billowing everywhere. My red-hot reaction was to smash what had driven me into a thousand pieces, but I knew that sooner or later I’d find a replacement. Freedom wasn’t found in tossing the treadmill, but in discovering a maintainable pace. Suggesting this to the counselor, he smiled for a second time.

When I had become passionate about the need for downtime in short stints, the demands of life always wore down my determination. Like slicing a Honeycrisp apple extra thin to
enjoy it longer, whatever time I set apart for respite was cut in half then reduced to quarters, then eighths, and finally sixteenths until any satisfying sense of sweet nourishment disappeared.

Though God had been echoing the invitation to enter his rest, I hesitated to respond because somewhere along the journey of life I had developed a mangled perspective. For me, downtime felt like detention: a forced confinement in which I was restrained against my will. I viewed respite like a tether holding me back rather than a resilient spring propelling me into the fullness of life God intended. As a result, I spent a lifetime outrunning downtime and missing out on one of the greatest wonders of all: rest.

The counselor challenged my distorted view. Through our discussions I came to see rest as a divine invitation to make the physical, emotional, and spiritual confession that God is Lord of all. If I affirm that God holds everything together, then I’m free to establish a sustainable rhythm as I entrust everything and everyone to God. When I enter into God’s rest, I crawl into bed knowing the world lounges safely in his hands.

But the biggest epiphany came when I realized that apart from the divine gift of downtime I cannot fully awaken to the presence of God. Rest refreshes our physical bodies, expands our mental capacities, and increases our spiritual awareness. Yet I had slept through some of God’s most spectacular displays because I failed to rest.

With this wondrous discovery beating in my heart—a
lack of rest makes me drowsy to God’s presence—I desperately wanted to awake. Staring at the counselor, I begged him to tell me what to do. He advised me to take responsibility: The pace of my life was my making, and only I could undo it. The grassy meadows and still waters described in the Twenty-third Psalm awaited, but I had to choose to answer the invitation of the Good Shepherd.

I stepped out of the strip mall dazed by the moment of discovery as well as all the work I had to do. Entering God’s rest required more than taking a catnap or pressing snooze—I had to become deliberate and intentional about the way I lived. That evening Leif and I discussed what it meant, not just for me, but for us, to unwrap the gift of rest in our lives. We needed to develop life-giving rhythms, a sustainable pace. Our approach to everyday life required a change.

We committed to realigning our lives. We woke up earlier, added exercise to our regimen, and reset our mealtimes. The tipping point: when we both committed to finish work by 6:00 p.m. and established a reasonable bedtime. Adjusting to the fledgling schedule, we found ourselves becoming more rested and fully present.

Secretly, I hoped to be as productive working nine hours as fourteen and struggled to accept smaller yields of accomplishment at the end of each day. Limiting my time at work meant reducing the number of projects I took on. For the first few months, I swung like a broken sprinkler head toward extremes.
I said no to everything—including some things I should have said yes to—but slowly discovered a more balanced approach. I gauged potential participation in everyday activities with the knowledge that every yes costs me three nos. My daily decisions soon became more thoughtful, intentional, prayerful. I wasn’t just giving myself; I was giving my
best
self to my relationships and work.

With rest, I noticed God-moments I might have missed before. My prayers grew clearer. Studying the Scripture became more meaningful. When life was rushed, I felt like I was reading a cookbook backward—nothing connected or made sense. Now I felt more attuned to God’s voice in the Bible.

Sometimes you have to slow to a stop and reset before you can experience divine presence. My hunger to know God increased as I learned to develop a healthy rhythm in life and rediscovered the wonder of rest.

Like a great comet catapulted across a starry night, God’s holy encore awed me. All the adjustments in daily life prepared me to rediscover one of the most beautiful gifts: Sabbath. This delightful treat of God isn’t one he keeps to himself but shares freely with humanity. God established the Sabbath from the beginning of time for all time. In a world marked by endless demands to work and produce, God issues an invitation to
rest. Scholars debate which came first, the word
Sabbath
—or
Shabbat
, as it’s known in Hebrew—or the word
ceasing
,” since
Shabbat
is derived from the Hebrew word
sh-b-t
, meaning “to cease.” Regardless, the primary meaning of Sabbath reminds us that if we do not master the art of ceasing, we cannot master the art of rest.

Making time to pause isn’t just a holy opportunity but a divine command. Despite studying one of the most important ritual observances in Judaism and listening to dozens of teachings on its importance, the Sabbath had remained a negotiable in my life. I treated the Sabbath like a rainy day fund, convincing myself that a single cloud justified a withdrawal. The Sabbath became a time bank to purchase all kinds of things I couldn’t afford the other six days of the week. I thought I could draw on the account as much as I needed, any time I needed, without consequence. Not until I woke up and confessed,
I can’t do this anymore
, did I realize all of my withdrawals had left me bankrupt.

I restudied the Sabbath in Scripture in the weeks following counseling. After an unforgettable encounter with God on Mount Sinai, Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. Of all the edicts, I chose to be the most deliberate in breaking the longest one. While many of the commandments are short and direct, like “Don’t murder” and “Don’t steal,” Moses spells out what it means to honor the Sabbath, highlights acceptable behavior, and even offers a brief history of the day’s
importance, alluding to God’s affections for humanity.

The only other place where Moses becomes as long-winded is the second commandment, which forbids idolatry, maybe because failure to rest, like idolatry, supplants God with lesser affections. Moses pauses to emphasize the ease with which we can find ourselves ascribing value to anything and everything other than God. At times we’ll be tempted to construct our own idols, but despite their appeal and allure, attributing worth to anything other than God comes at great cost. The forbidding of idols isn’t meant to detain us from something good but to protect us from something destructive, spotlighting the breadth of God’s love.

Though I had always seen these two commands as separate in the past, I now viewed them as walking hand in hand. Apart from developing a healthy rhythm of rest, we succumb to idols and their constant demands. The Sabbath provides the space we need to recognize the false gods that slip into our lives when we’re distracted. This holy day gives us the opportunity to remove them and recalibrate our lives to God.

The Sabbath roots us in God’s love for us and for all of creation. In Exodus 20:10, Moses describes the Sabbath as a day when everyone, including our family, friends, employees, and guests—even our animals—should cease from work. In essence, the blessing and sanctity of the day should overflow to everyone we know, everything we touch. Behind the command is the ferocious love of God that reminds us we were never
meant for slavery or exploitation. Simply put: in the process of honoring the Sabbath, we learn to treat people better. We have the opportunity to celebrate their work and rest and play and spiritual growth—not just our own.