2019: A Year of Rest

2019 was an interesting year. I couldn’t tell you 12 months ago what I was about to walk into. Maybe that’s most years, but this one in particular felt especially unpredictable. Usually I can look out on the horizon and have a pixelated idea of what’s ahead. I can’t make out exactly what it is, but as time goes on, it slowly starts to take shape. It’ll become more and more clear until it’s right in front of me and I think “Oh yea, that makes sense”... but that wasn’t the case this year.

Most of 2019 was me looking out on the horizon and seeing... nothing. It was blank. I’m not sure how else to describe it, other than it just all felt really grey. And a lot of the time it felt like all I could do was put one foot in front of the other, not really knowing which direction I was headed in.

Which brings me to my word for 2019 - rest.

I can see now how intentional God was about inviting me into a year of rest, but 12 months ago I had no idea what that would actually entail. I just felt a nudge to slowly clear up my schedule and let go of some things that no longer served me. I can now honestly say that the word and practice of “rest” was such a gift this past year.

Within the first few months of 2019 I was experiencing what it looked like to rest by honoring the sabbath. If you read my blog post from March, I explained how difficult of a practice this actually is, but how I was learning that it’s so important. I then realized that I needed to incorporate daily rest into my routine. I was already waking up at 6 AM weekday mornings to sit on the couch and either read, journal, or pray to start my day… but I felt an invitation to something different.

Reading, journaling, and praying are all active forms or rest on my part. God was inviting me into more solitude and silence. So I started setting a timer for anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes to just sit quietly, alert, and not think about anything. This is not easy to do for someone like me who has monkey brain. My mind is constantly bouncing from one idea to the next. Actually being still and present with God for 5-10 minutes was, and still can be, very difficult for me.

There were plenty of practices I attempted this year that didn’t “work”... reading all four gospels, fixed hour prayer, reading the liturgy every day… all of these required me to “do” something, and God was very clearly drawing me away from anything that required work on my part. He was asking me to “stop”, which in Hebrew is “shabbat”, which is how we arrive at the word “sabbath”. Ironic.

I can’t say exactly when or why it happened, but by about April or May I hit a wall in my faith. Of course it wasn’t a literal wall, but part of me feels like that’s what I saw when I looked out on the horizon at the beginning of 2019 - I just didn’t know it yet. It was blank, and I couldn’t make out what it was.

I sometimes wonder if what I was actually looking at was the wall God was leading me into.

Around this same time I was reading Peter Scazzero’s book “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” where he includes an entire chapter about what “the wall” in a faith journey is. I couldn’t have told you that’s where I was until I read that part of the book. I’m so thankful I read his book when I did, because without the help of someone wiser who’s been there before, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Being able to put words to what I was feeling made me feel less crazy and less lost.

Below is an image of the “Stages of Faith” talked about in the book with a link to download a PDF that describes each stage. I encourage you to read this if you have no idea what I’m talking about.

PDF Download

The book talks about how common it is to identify with more than one stage. A lot of times people always relate to stages 2 and 3, but we will still tend to have a specific “home stage” that best characterizes our life of faith now. The book also talks about how everyone will hit the wall (more than once), but many stall, or walk the other way, or give up on faith altogether.

I have countless journal pages filled with detail about what this experience has been like, but most of it is unhealthy to share on the internet. The two times I felt peace about sharing where I was at were in these two blog posts:

I believe this year of rest, honoring the sabbath, and practicing solitude and silence was God’s way of gently stripping me down to nothing. Slowly taking away the things I’m comfortable with, the things I cling to to feel confident in my faith.

And when it got quiet, that’s when He started to work in me. And that’s really when I realized for the first time in a long time… that I don’t actually know anything.

That sounds dramatic, but I felt God slowly debunk a lot of things I thought I knew about him. This experience led to a process of unlearning and deconstructing ideas… not to erase them, but to build off of from a healthy foundation. This entire experience taught me to be gentle and respect where I’m at and where others are at in their faith journey. It’s easy to judge, I know because I’ve been there. So if there’s one thing you take away from reading this, I hope it’s a reminder that no one’s path is linear (or even circular, as the above diagram might suggest).

Lastly, I really didn’t know if I’d ever share about this on my blog, but I felt God give me a lot of peace about it. I know throughout the year I’ve ruffled feathers with some people by sharing things I was learning (or unlearning) - some of which could be looked at as “controversial”. It’s possible this entire blog post falls into that category. However, I believe it’s worth putting out there if it helps even one person.

Throughout the year I read a lot of books that helped me along the way, I thought I’d link some of them here in case anyone was curious.