January is starting to look busy, and I’m at fault for trying to do more.
As the new year unfolds, I find myself caught in the whirlwind of busyness, thriving on adrenaline.
Just hours before we were about to hop on the plane for our getaway, I came down with a rash that started on just one side of my body, along my dermatome in my C2C3 nerves. It began a few days prior when I started having tension around my head and my left shoulder blade.
The throbbing sensation around the lower back of my skull kept me edging my fingers looking for lumps. Every little push sends me jerking away in pain, and minutes before I flew, I dosed up on analgesics to help me manage my pain.
Rest — it sounds like a nice concept, but so hard to live by.
In our hustle culture, there’s often this quest for control, an undercurrent for more.
The doctor had told me that this virus is insidious and opportunistic. Give them the right combination of environment and they thrive. So when you have a weakened immune system, some cumulative stress and sleep deficiency, you’re primed to break out with the blisters and there’s no slowing them down.
But how can you even slow yourself down when there are things to accomplish, jobs to do and mouths to feed, and honestly — it’s much easier to keep busy than to be still.
Coming upon the Word today, I let it read me:
“Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?’”
Genesis 18:11-12
And I pondered, how long has it been since I genuinely laughed? — the deep belly roll-on-the-ground kind of laugh?
I mean, haven’t we all read the news, studied the stats, groaned with the market?
Anxiety contorts us into pretzels of emotions, and I’ve balked, barked, and butted heads, stubbornly said no, overreacted, made mountains of molehills, and I have frowned more than I have had faith — all in the name of hustling.
But only by entering into a rested life would we be able to delve into a deeper life — and this is the kind of life you don’t stumble into, but you intentionally enter into.
To live meaningfully, you need to rest deeply, and to rest deeply, you need to reset purposefully – resetting of all the things that have wound you, allowing for the kind of reflection and refreshment that your soul actually craves for.
When the Bible mentioned that Sarah laughed, her first laughter was because she could not bring herself to believe how the promises of God would be possible in the face of all her impending possibilities.
She laughed in disbelief because she knew that it was medically, biologically and technically impossible for a woman her age to have children.
She laughed in the face of sadness because the dream of holding an infant was a hope she had given up long ago.
She laughed because, why and how, in this one big world that the great and gracious promises of God would happen in her own life when she had felt so frail, fragile, and frayed?
It’s true — When all you can see of your own life are your own impossibilities, you can be blinded from seeing that you serve a God of all impossibilities.
But is anything too hard for the Lord?
Is anything too difficult for the God who summons everything, is in charge of all things, and is able to employ anything?
The grace of God is what will allow you to work out the gifts of grace that works the impossible within you.
I kept reading.
The Word says then it happened just at the right time when it should and would. Just at the ripe time when Sarah thought she could not get any older, she conceived. At the age of 90!
“The Lord kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. She became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. This happened at just the time God had said it would. And Abraham named their son Isaac. Eight days after Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. And Sarah declared, ‘God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a baby? Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age!'”
And I almost laughed my head off.
Sarah received the promises of God all because of God.
And our life — is it not all because of grace?
This grace; this unforced rhythms that we ought to live by, is very free and light.
It became clear to me.
Deeply resting, believing, trusting, abiding and producing is the way to live.
Constantly hustling, jostling, jockeying, shoving and pushing isn’t necessarily the way of faith.
Laughter then is the face of faith because “you have as much laughter as you have faith.” (Martin Luther)
And I know it from experience; the cause of all anxiety and worry is displacing the center of trust on things instead of God.
The moment we start taking things into our own hands — the moment we believe that we can control our lives — is the moment we displace God and become our own god.
When the doctor reassuringly told me ways to manage my pain, I kept looking at her kind face and the twinkle in her eyes, trying hard not to focus on her disproportionately small right hand, which I later learned is a medical condition called Brachydactyly.
She kept assuring me past her own suffering, past her own medical diagnosis, and I kept thinking about what Parker Palmer wrote: “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
We can only be who we are meant to be, live life the way we are meant to live — when we slow down long enough to rest and listen.
The way to reduce stress is to centre it back on Christ.
And when I look at my own blistering neck during this holiday, touch the scabs that are slowly and steadily healing, I do less with what to put on my face, and what people think of me. and more with the thought that now lingers long within me:
Joy is the unchanging promises of God, and the face of faith we wear
Because GK Chesterton wrote: “Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan is the gigantic secret of the Christian”.
If understanding that grace is what paves the way towards joy, towards laughter and towards real life, then at the beginning of what projects to be the busiest year of our family life, I want to do one thing right.
I want to hustle less and rest more.
I want to control less and trust more.
I want our family to get back to knowing by heart the epic story of God’s redemption — because honestly — who can get enough of this kind of holy love and glorious laughter that makes you alive, sets you ablaze, and helps you live from the core of who you are?
This type of joy does not lessen with age and mortgage.
We can laugh because we have One who has won it all!
God has brought me laughter
Genesis 21: 6
Reflection Questions
When did you last have a good laugh?
How would you laugh in the face of a future unknown?
How would you in faith see a hard year turned into a high year?
How can you let go of your weary soul, of the weight on your shoulder, and live lightly at the coming year ahead?