Sarah Markley
Best Days of My Life
Genuine. Transparent. Brave. Perceptive. Those words immediately come to mind when thinking of Sarah. Through her writings, I have witnessed immense love for her husband, adoration of her two beautiful daughters and unstoppable love for her Redeemer. Her life stories breathe remnants of our Savior. I am overjoyed to have her voice for this study! Visit Sarah on her blog.
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Choosing Rest
I read an article recently about some women with a rare crazy form of progressive insomnia.
It was a disorder that caused all of them with that genetic marker to, as they age, be less and less able to sleep. At one point these women were going weeks and months without sleep and their bodies couldn’t handle it. Death is the eventual result because a human body, it would seem, cannot go without sleep for long.
Insomnia related death. Crazy, right?
Maybe not. The “mystery” of sleep has always fascinated me. We cozy ourselves in the cocoons of quilts and pajama pants and put our heads on pillows. On the left. On my back. On my stomach. We all have our preferences. And then we close our eyes with faith that our bodies will be restored in six to nine hours.
We’ll wake up with clearer minds, no nighttime headaches or leftover indigestion, and with a new outlook on life.
Our bodies were designed to NEED sleep, to crave it, to rely on it.
When I was a little girl the worst punishment you could dole out to me was a nap. When I was a college student I depended on power naps to get through the afternoon. And as a mother now, there are some days I would give my right hand for a quiet, dark hour in my bed.
I think that cycle is natural. We fight rest. We crave rest. We fight rest. We crave it.
The older I get the more disciplined I’m becoming about scheduling regular times of rest into my life. I can’t go 100 miles an hour for very long without my whole world coming to a crashing halt. I need times without writing deadlines, without the computer or the television, without the speed of the lesson-school-home circuit that rules my life from September to June.
So I retreat.
If I don’t I become the equivalent of the progressive insomniac who dies because her body, heart and mind can’t restore itself.
I close my eyes. I get away for the weekend with my husband. I put 30 minutes of television on for my daughters and I sleep for a few minutes. I plan at least an hour of slowness into each day. I combat the chaos by finding the quiet.
I really don’t want to die because I’ve chosen the busy life.
I want to live because I’ve chosen to rest.
REST is a 4-week Bible study series. This week is Rest to Restoration, beginning with Monday's Bible Study.
View an overview of the entire series, Begin Week 1: Rest to Ransom, Begin Week 2: Rest to Reflection or Subscribe now to receive posts via email or rss feeder.
Join us for next Tuesday's guest writer, Teri Fode of Teri Fode Photography. We'll close the study with my friend, Michelle Lanksbury recounting her incredible story of resting in God with the life of her son and by hosting a "WINGS" Psalm 91 necklace giveaway for our readers.
