Resting is More Important than Sorting Socks

The shrilling alarm went off waking me from a deep slumber. I could barely move my arm to hit the snooze button; it felt like a 500 pound weight was strapped on.
“Is it morning already?” I asked myself as I slapped the snooze button.
“No wait, what day is it? Monday? Wednesday?” I asked.
“What day is it? What time is it?” my brain was so confused.
Grogginess doesn’t capture what my body and brain were experiencing.

Then the alarm went off again.

“Ugh! I’m so tired! It can’t be time to get up already!” I reassured myself as I reached again for that noisemaker.

Hitting the snooze again, I tried to remember what day of the week it was. And then it hit me, it was Saturday!

“Why did I set the alarm on my day off?” I questioned. I was a tad irritated with myself. And then I realized why. I was “just going to rest for a minute.” Apparently, that minute was 120 minutes! It was now 3 p.m. (Apparently, I set the nap function on my clock to 120 minutes instead of 10 minutes.)

Have you ever experienced that? Your body is so tired it can barely move, let alone think, and you can’t even remember where you are? I have. That was yesterday. It’s times like these I’m reminded of the need for rest.

Probably, you’re like me and every day has some tasks and responsibilities assigned to it. Whether you do the assigning or someone else does, the tasks are there, waiting for you to tend to them.

It could be your kids asking you to do stuff for them, your spouse, your boss, your coworkers, church leaders. Hey, even your dog may have “tasks” for you to do. Then there’s the ones we assign ourselves to do. They’re not always important. In fact, most of the time, I suspect we could not do some of these (many of these) tasks and get that day of rest.

That’s what I’ve learned anyway. Rest is a good thing. It does my body, brain, and soul good.

More and more, I’m convinced we don’t do ourselves any favor by not taking a day of rest. I’m pretty convinced the reason my body was so out of it yesterday was because I’d been going and going all week. There comes a time to heed the call of the body too. We need to rest.

So what is going to happen if you take my advice and rest? Will all the tasks get completed? Nope!

But guess what? Your brain will be refreshed. And if you’re like me, you’ll discover those things didn’t need to get done anyway.
In fact, you’ll probably discover lots of things you do are actually wasting your time and energy and keeping you from doing truly important things.

With that in mind, I actually have a whole list of things I believe are a waste of time and energy keeping me from resting and doing other important stuff I really should be doing. I know you have a list too. But I thought you’d enjoy taking a peek at some of my timewasters.

So here are just five things I’ve decided are a waste of my time:
• Making my bed every day (because I’m just going to sleep in it again anyway).
• Dusting furniture every week (If you come visit me, feel free to leave me a note on any dusty table in my house. I’ll get a good laugh from it!)
• Cooking every day (because it just creates more dirty dishes).
• Folding some clothes especially socks! I believe strongly in having a place for clean socks. They just don’t have to be matched, paired, sorted, or folded neatly.
• Sorting the daily mail. (Let’s face it. It’s mostly junk mail anyway, which will enter the recycle bin at the end of the week. The rest is bills, and who wants to look at bills every day?)

So you may have cringed at some of the items on my list. That’s okay. It’s good to cringe once in a while. It’s also good to learn how others may live their lives somewhat different from you and still survive.

Would it be nice to have that stuff done every day or every week? Sure. But is it important? No.

Do you know what is important every day and every week? Rest!

It’s also good to learn some people actually say “No” to good things, like dusting every week, so that they can say “Yes” to important things, like rest.

You know, I could have made my bed, dusted the furniture, matched up some socks, and sorted the mail during my two-hour nap yesterday. But you know what? I would have been even more exhausted and perhaps become crabby with my family.

Instead, when I finally did get up, I made some homemade chicken noodle soup for my daughter who has pneumonia, and I actually did some dishes. Then I decided I needed more rest. I was tired. So I chose to crawl into my unmade bed at 8:45 p.m., and I didn’t get up until 10 hours later.

Do you think I needed some rest? I do. I’m also certain many of you reading this could use some extra time in your week to take 120 minute nap, go to bed early, or get a 10-hour night of sleep.

If you need extra incentive to rest, remember, even the Lord rested. Rest is so important God made it part of His Top 10 list of really important things. Don’t believe me, check out Exodus 20.

So, go ahead. Stop dusting for a week! Stop making your bed. Stop sorting your socks! Get some rest already.