Rest: Weakness or Strength?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” ~Matthew 11:28

In light of my current health “situation,” I thought it would be fitting to have a little chat about rest.

I can understand the physical necessity of rest.  I understand that we can evade illness and heal faster with rest.  I understand that I can be a better mom, wife, employee, and friend if I rest.  So if I know all this, why is it so difficult for me to do?!? I have an emotional block that makes me feel immediately guilty if I try to rest. I usually need to be falling over before I will surrender.  

Sound familiar?

I should give a “quick” review of my health journey, so that you can understand what brought this up now.

Recently, I have been going through periods of excruciating abdominal pain that have become longer and more frequent, as well as experiencing extreme exhaustion.  This is not the first time I have had abdominal issues.  My crazy gut journey started back in  2017 with a botched gallbladder surgery.  My gallstones were misdiagnosed as heartburn in 2015 by the less than stellar medical team in jail.  I spent two years not sleeping because of the terrible pain, constantly throwing up, which nobody thought was strange.  

By the time I got out of jail and was seen by doctors on the outside, my gallbladder was infected, FULL of stones and gangrene.  When I finally got in for surgery, the surgeon hit an artery and had a mess in there since my gallbladder was in such bad shape. She told me that it was possible that there were stones left in my bile duct.  If I had further attacks I was to come to the emergency room and they could remove the stones  through an “uninvasive manner" via endoscopic surgery.  

A couple of years later I had more bouts of abdominal pain.  I went to my local hospital in the middle of the night when I couldn’t take it any longer.  I explained to them what my surgeon said, and they responded that nothing was wrong and sent me away.  I then had to be taken back by ambulance because my pancreas had exploded as a result of a stone being lodged in my duct.  I stayed at my local hospital for about ten days while the docs had no idea what they were doing and almost killed me because their ego was too big to say this was over their head.  I had necrotizing pancreatitis, and I was literally dying in the hospital.  

This is not me being dramatic.  I was actually dying.  This was right at the beginning of COVID, so no one could come in to advocate for me, and I was too of it to advocate for myself.  Finally, they sent me to a bigger, teaching hospital where I spent the next 20 days.  I had a feeding tube surgically placed into my small intestine. I couldn't eat or drink for 6 months while my pancreas healed itself (which was a beautiful, incredible miracle).  However, that healing process created a ton of tiny scar tissue, giving me chronic pancreatitis until 2024 when Dartmouth finally did a total pancreotomy with auto islet transplant, meaning that the took out my pancreas, duodenum, spleen, appendix, half of my stomach and part of my intestines then put the islets (that make my insulin and normally live in the pancreas) into my liver. 

Then, in 2025 I had two fistulas (little tunnels) grow from the inside of my small intestine to the outside of my stomach. My Dartmouth team went in and removed the fistulas and the section of intestine that they grew from.  Now, here we are in 2026 and I am experiencing extreme pain in my upper abdomen with exhaustion.

Throughout this whole process I refused to rest.  I worked seven days a week in jail, getting up at 3 am to go bake in the kitchen every day.  I worked construction through every illness and after every surgery. I even worked remotely in the hospital running recovery meetings.  What is wrong with me, y’all?!?

I can list a plethora of childhood traumas that have led me to this inability to rest. For instance, when I was young my father (who was actually my stepfather, but I didn't know it then) wouldn't let me rest. There was this understanding that I was always to be cleaning, moving, doing something. I can recall times where he invited us all to sit down and watch a movie together, and it felt SOOOO incredibly uncomfortable. During this time, I created a belief that rest is unproductive and therefore of no value. This belief was then reinforced over time by society, personal relationships, and of course my inner voice. I could write a whole paper about society’s views on rest, but that is for another day. 

So, great! We know the problem and pieces of where it came from, but what do we do about it?

There is certainly value to therapy.  Therapy can help us work through these childhood traumas, or even adulthood traumas, that have led to some of these unhealthy beliefs.  It can help us to reframe our belief systems to understand that rest is not unproductive. It is not of no value.  We can research the science behind rest actually being productive in so many ways.  Rest helps us to rebuild our cells to prevent illness and heal wounds. It helps us to re-energize our bodies and minds, putting to rest (no pun intended) the chaos of the past to have renewed energy for the present moment and the moments ahead.

While understanding the mental and physical benefits of rest, recently I am also finding a bigger and better answer to this problem, one with God at the center.  If I look back at every good change in my life, God has indeed been at the center of it all. As I was researching this issue of rest, I began to see a common idea emerge.  It turns out that rest is actually a Biblical principle. God wants us to rest!

He led by example in the very first book of the bible.  In Genesis 1 God creates something new each day and rests in between.  Then In Genesis 2, in His finale, on the seventh day He RESTED!  Then later in the Commandments that He gives to Moses in Exodus 20:8, God commands us to ”Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God.  On that day no one in your household may do any work…”  

Now, I feel that it is important to note that this is a part of the Old Testament law.  The Old Testament was a time when God was trying everything he could to get people to behave, including passing down a plethora of laws and consequences for breaking those laws.  Clearly this did not work, which is where Jesus comes in.  Jesus’ death atoned for all of our sins, getting rid of the need for all of the Old Testament law. Yet even with the salvation He brought us, His desire for us to rest did not change.

He shows this clearly in Luke 10:38-42 with the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus stops at the home of Mary and Martha, two sisters in the village of Bethany.  Martha runs around like a crazy lady trying to prepare dinner for her guests.  She is furious with Mary because Mary is simply sitting at Jesus’s feet listening to His teachings.  Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her.  Jesus does not do this.  Instead, He says “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about.  Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”  

I have to admit that I am usually the Martha in these situations.  I place so much value in cooking and cleaning, so that I can be a good hostess, but what if that is not what defines being a good hostess.  What if being a good hostess is more about sitting with our guests, hearing about their lives, and connecting with them in the way that God wants us to connect with our family and friends.  I realize that the point of this message is that we put value on listening to God instead of being “busy,” but I  believe that this other interpretation has value as well.

The most interesting message for rest comes in 1 Kings 19. Here Elijah is fleeing for his life and becomes so overwhelmed and exhausted that he prays for God to take his life. God pretty much tells him to have a snack and a nap…and he does.  He is then able to continue on to do God’s will.  There are absolutely times where I need to simply have a snack and a nap.  Life feels far more manageable with a full belly and some rest. 

There are a ton of places in the Bible where God shows that He wants us to rest.  The question remains…HOW??? I can know this information, yet still struggle with actually feeling comfortable resting.

Matthew 11:28-30 gives us some direction for finding this rest.  At this time Jesus had been out preaching in the towns, and He said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”  Translation: Give your problems to Jesus, and let him carry the heavy load!  I have found that both the process and the result of giving my problems to God give my body and mind rest.  I know this seems like an abstract concept at first, but it becomes easier as it is practiced. 

There are many ways to begin this concept of “Giving it to God.” For some, creating a God box is a concrete way of handing our stressors over to God, so that we can rest our body and mind.  Simply find a container of any sort. It could be anything from an empty cereal box to an ornate glass jar.  Then keep a small notebook or cute sticky notes, and a pen near or in  your God box.  As stressors arise, write them down, put them in your God box, and ask God to take them from you.  The key part is to not continually take them back and worry about them.  You have given them to God and no longer need to waste energy worrying about them. 

For me, prayer and meditation are a crucial part of giving things to God.  These are super helpful because the acts of prayer and meditation also grant me time to rest.  I am just not always great at actually doing it.  When Jesus says, “Come to me,” I believe he means to commune with him in prayer and meditation. Prayer is most often when I am talking to God, and meditation is most often when I am spending time listening to Him; sometimes they combine as one. 🙂 The important part is taking some time to communicate with Him and rest in His strength.  I have so much lasting relief when I really take the time to do this and not just rush through my prayer time.

Of course, I am not the only one who has benefitted from trusting God to give us rest. In Exodus 33:14 Moses is freaking out a little bit as he is leading the Israelites to the Promised Land.  He wants God to tell him the plan and who is going to help him. God says, “I will personally go with you, Moses, and I will give you rest - everything will be fine for you.”  I know that I look all over the place for the “answers” and the “plan.”  Instead of spending extra energy looking for the outside world to give me answers for how to rest (and making myself even more tired than when I first began), all I really need to do is look to God!

There are so many examples in The Bible of God telling us to rest, and telling us that all we need to do is look to Him to get that rest.  I will not go into all of them, because if you have made it this far you are probably ready to be finished reading by now. 😃 The  point is that rest is good! It is not a sign of weakness.  It is a sign of following God’s will for us, and we need to look to Him to find the strength to rest.  If you are new to exploring a relationship with God, and are not sure how to talk to Him or rest in His presence, reach out to me and I will help you.  For now, just start talking to Him like He is your best friend.

Thank you for reading and giving me a reason to explore this topic. For my part, I will try to do a better job at putting it to use in my own life and hope you do the same.

Now, go get some rest!