resting place

Impatient and restless. I teetered between the two emotions for weeks, my days punctuated by the dull pain in my back and dryness in my eyes. Every morning, I would drag myself out of bed, with my eyes on the Bible at the nightstand but with never enough time to read it. Then the battle with traffic, and the marathon run of copy and deadlines and interviews and phone calls at work. I would return home with barely enough energy for cooking, cleaning and time with Aric.

The job that threw me into this a brutal schedule is something I had prayed for. For seven months I felt a different kind of restlessness, trapped in what seemed like a very long season of unemployment. I love my work. When I am reporting and writing, I feel God's pleasure just as a runner might as he runs. The question I've been struggling with is how to find rest amid the busyness, which seemed to elude me as I get older, the workload heavier and expectations higher.

So I went to the mountains. For two days, I turned off my cell phone. I didn't check e-mail. I didn't drive. All I did was worship, eat and play with about 270 other friends from church at Forest Hills campsite in Big Bear. It almost felt like my life, spinning out of control, came to a full stop. And when that gap was filled with silence and praise it became my resting place.

I own an obscure piano CD of hymns, a gift from a friend long ago that I pull out from time to time when I need to relax. When I arrived at the retreat center, music from that same CD played in the santuary as if to beckon me in. Then I began to see them. God's ubiquitous touch. A praying elderly woman and her beautiful wrinkly hand as it gently floated above a young woman's bowed head. Long walks, long talks. The wise words of a woman to never hold God hostage to an outcome you want in prayer, but to choose to live in ambiguity and fear that forces one to find peace that surpasses understanding. Every touch was filled with such overwhelming hope and love for us.

I returned exhausted and yet deeply rested. All this time I've been running to Burke Williams and yoga to find pockets of rest, God's touch had been so available.