Happy New Year you guys! I took a break, went on vacation. It was so great! I spent time with my sister and her husband in Germany. We watched so many movies and shows. There were a lot of debates. We went to a beautiful Christmas Garden, a park full of lights (that’s where the picture is from) and a Christmas Market. So many good waffles. And we even planned a trip in April for my little sister’s birthday. It was a full three weeks. But the biggest thing that happened was that I received the rest that God has been trying to give me.

You see, with work and everything, I rush around trying to be a good worker, a good friend, a good Christian. But in rushing around to get those things done, in refusing to be still and rest, I was refusing one of God’s great gifts to His beloved. Rest is a gift and a necessity. Being still with God allows Him to be with us. To show us His vision, tell us new and miraculous things. If we let Him. If we let ourselves be still.

It’s hard and uncomfortable being still. When I was still I realized some things that were hard to swallow. Like one, to get money for the trip I had started planning on doing so much for work, already discounting rest. I’ve made not resting, refusing rest, a habit. Another thing I had to swallow was with something I had been working on, something I started writing, wasn’t going to work. Twenty five pages in and, it wasn’t going to work. I needed to scrap the idea and start over. That was heartbreaking but necessary. I need to learn that while some things may sound good and feel good, in the long run they won’t work. God tries to tell me that but I get stubborn. I try to find ways to make it work but in the end, I end up making things worse and wasting my time just to break things.

This is what I learned in stillness and rest. I learned to let go, and let God. Let Him give me rest. Let Him show me change and how to navigate it. Let Him be God in my life. 

Those lessons are more difficult to enact than writing them. Yet when I enact those lessons, I can see God’s majesty and wonder so much more. He has a chance to show me His power and His love for me. It may not feel good, I may have to swallow some things I don’t like, but after resting in God and being still for Him, I feel so much closer to Him.

So while this post may be later than usually, I hope that as the new year begins you don’t rush back into being busy. Don’t let God become a checkbox on your to-do list of betterment. 

Let Him be God in your life. 

Accept the stillness and rest He is giving you. 

Remember that in whatever He is asking you to do, He loves you and wants the best for you too.

Have a blessed year!

“And He [God] said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.””

Exodus 33:14 NKJV