When Someone Teaches a Hardworking Heart to Rest

To the Friend Who Reminds You to Take Care of Yourself 

To the friend who reminds you, in a gentle way, that you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of everyone else, this letter is for you.

There are some of us out there who were raised with the idea that work comes first, and rest comes last. If the sun is shining, then you work. If the weather is good, then you work even harder. You’ve probably heard these sayings your entire life:

You can sleep when it rains.

You can rest in the winter.

You'll rest when you're gone.

When you're raised this way, especially when you're raised in a farm community or a community of hard workers, this is just part of who you are. You feel the need to keep going, to keep working, to keep showing up for everyone else. Even when you're exhausted. Even when your own passions, the things that bring you joy, quietly sit on the shelf waiting for you to return to them.

You remind us that life was never meant to be lived at full speed every single day. You remind us it’s okay to slow down for a moment. That sitting on the couch for an afternoon, doing absolutely nothing, isn’t a waste of time, it’s restoration.

You remind us to live the life we need to get life back into our hearts. To pick up the pen and write because we love it, because it makes us come alive. To walk outside and enjoy the quiet beauty of the setting sun. To laugh, to breathe, to remember who we are, to remember we are more than the work we create for the world to see.

For the person who’s spent their entire life dedicated to helping others, this reminder can be an uncomfortable one. Resting can be an uncomfortable thing. It’s not something we know how to do. It’s not something we feel we should be doing.

But you remind us, too, that even God knows the importance of rest. He put it into the very fabric of creation. If it was important enough for Him, it’s important enough for us.

So thank you for being the friend who reminds the hardworking, passionate, dedicated hearted person in the world that their passions, their rest, their well-being, all matter too. Sometimes the best gift we can give one another is permission to stop, permission to rest, permission to live. And because of you, we’re learning how.