Learning to rest during recovery

“Remember the Day of Rest, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you will do all your work. ¹⁰ But the seventh day is a Day of Rest to the Lord your God. You, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your cattle, or the traveler who stays with you, must not do any work on this day. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them. And He rested on the seventh day. So the Lord gave honor to the Day of Rest and made it holy. Ex 20:8-11

Along the back roads in early spring in Northern New York I enjoyed seeing stands of maple trees

all linked together with plastic tubing and buckets as my neighbors harvested  sap to make syrup. Just remembering those days makes my mouth water for the taste of that real maple syrup and maple candy.

Each fall, the sap drained back down to the base of the tree;  the leaves turned colors and fell off in preparation for the winter  season - a season of rest for the tree. Without that rest, the tree couldn't survive the long, harsh, northern winters. Then as the spring temperatures rose above freezing once again, the sap started running back up into the extremities of the tree, allowing the leaves to bud out.

This sap was the life-blood of the maple tree. Its sweetness made it worth the effort to collect and boil it down into syrup. But in order to make the purest and tastiest syrup, my farming neighbors knew they needed to collect the  sap when it first started running back up into the branches of the tree, before the leaves came out right after the season of rest for the tree.

Resting seems to be a necessary part of life to help us be at our best, just like the maple sap. Without proper rest, our bodies have difficulty healing from illness.  We have difficulty "de-stressing" and getting back on track emotionally or mentally. We burn out.

The Children of Israel  were burned out, drained emotionally and physically from their four centuries of brutal slave labor to the Egyptians. For their first few months in the wilderness, God gave them a season of rest, carefully working with them to restore their trust in him. But once the crisis period passed for them, they needed to get back to a more "normal" routine which included productive work to build up their self-esteem and their  identity as a nation.

During phase two of the healing process, God  incorporated a balanced regimen of work and rest into their lives. This weekly Sabbath rest was about more than just ceasing from their labors on the seventh day. It was about taking time to rediscover who their God was and who they were in relationship to him.

Not only did God want to heal their hearts from slavery, he wanted to prevent such physical and emotional captivity from ever happening again.  He made rest a mandatory part of their law, sandwiching it between the first commandments about loving him and the last ones about how to treat others. It was to be a day spent in his presence, to build relationship with him so they could know how to live with the others around them.

Think about it. When we're hurting badly inside, we often become "workaholics" to try to forget our grief and pain. While the hard work does dull the pain,  it also keeps us too busy to work through it. The work prevents us from  spending quality time with our Creator.  And it often causes us to neglect or even harm relationships with those around us.

Quite often we don't want to spend time with God  because he is a God of truth, He loves us too much to allow us to wallow in lies and pain. We don't want to face the pain or hard work of healing. We don't want to face the fact that once we've been hurt, we have the potential to pass that hurt on to others. It's easier to nurse a grudge than to forgive.  So we lose ourselves in our jobs or busy-work, or we wallow in self-pity.

When we stop and spend time with our Creator, he will mirror the content of our hearts back at us so he can cleanse and heal us. We need to stop fighting him tooth and nail because he has our best interests at heart.

Lord, help us to rest in you so you can bring out the best in us!

Sharing our stories

Then Moses went to meet his father-in-law. He bowed down and kissed him. They asked each other if all was well, and went into the tent.  Moses told his father-in-law all the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians because of Israel. He told him about how they had suffered on the way, and how the Lord had saved them.

Jethro was glad because of all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in saving them from the hand of the Egyptians. So Jethro said, “Honor and thanks be to the Lord, Who saved you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of Pharaoh, and Who made you free from the power of Egypt. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods. It was proven when they acted in their pride against the people.” Then Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, gave a burnt gift in worship to God. And Aaron came with all the leaders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.  Ex 18: 7-12  New Life Version (NLV)

Sometimes as I sit in church during the sermon, my mind wanders. Gasp! I know - I'm the
pastor's wife and should probably hang on every word, but alas, it's true. My mind wanders. But inevitably, when my husband begins to tell a story that's related to his topic, my ears perk up and my mind reins in those wandering thoughts.

Why? Because stories are powerful. Stories have an interactive capacity to weave us into their web so that we imagine what the character is feeling and we experience the action in our minds like a virtual computer game.

Not only do they captivate us, stories unite, connect and heal us - both through the listening and the telling. 

Remember Moses?  He had married into Jethro's family after fleeing from Egypt 40 years before the time of today's Bible passage.   So Jethro probably knew Moses' history. No doubt Moses had shared stories of  the sacrifice of Jochebed, his mother,  with his new wife's family. He probably told stories of things that happened in Pharaoh's court - maybe even recounting the trauma that caused him to stutter.  When he killed the Egyptian task master and fled, he came to Jethro and eventually became part of that family. For the second forty years of his life, Moses was healing slowly through sharing his stories with trusted friends and family until he was ready to go back to  lead his people out of Egypt.

Here in Exodus, when Jethro meets his son-in-law this time, Moses begins to tell the new stories - the stories of the suffering of his people, the victories of God, the struggles in the wilderness and the miracles of God's provision.

During the healing journey, telling the story of our lives and experiences, especially the traumatic ones, is vital to the process. It helps us to recover our voice - to have words to tell about what we've experienced. Story telling helps us integrate our painful experiences into our lives and lessens the pain the more we share it.  Telling our stories helps us to affirm the reality of what happened to us.
It also offers a chance for others to give us feedback, revealing  things to us that we may not even see yet!

Remember, when Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness? He had doubts about his own ability to become the deliverer and leader of his people. He was afraid and  balked, telling God he couldn't do it because he stuttered.

But as Jethro listens to these new tales, he hears what Moses may not yet realize - there is no more stuttering. His voice is now confident and strong.  Jethro listened with interest and empathy; then he was able to affirm to Moses that God had indeed done a healing work, not only for the Israelites, but for Moses too: " [God] made you free from the power of Egypt."
 

Listening to life stories blesses the hearer as well as the story teller. As Jethro listened to Moses' story, his faith increased. "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods." And he worshipped God.  If there was any doubt before in Jethro's heart about the person of Almighty God, the I AM,   there wasn't any now.

What are you going through on your healing journey? And what is God doing in you?
Share that in some way, either through writing or verbally with someone you trust. We never know how our stories will affect the lives of others, but one thing is for certain - God will always use our stories to heal our hearts and to encourage others!