Giving Your Heart Permission to Choose
Giving Your Heart Permission to Choose
Rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means giving your heart permission to choose how and when to do all that is required of you. It’s the difference between ‘I have to,’ and ‘I want to.’
For many years I believed what the antiquated Greek philosopher Plato taught, which was essentially, “You must wait for ‘divine inspiration’ for creativity.” And that’s why writing my first historical fiction novel took me from my 21st year while living in Barcelona, Spain until my 38th year in Redding, California. By the end of my novel-writing journey, I believed the opposite, “As an artist, you just need to make yourself work diligently every day regardless of how you feel.”
But I was wrong. There must be balance. You cannot saunter through an artistic life waiting for inspiration without finishing what you started, yet you also cannot force or push yourself so hard that your beautiful gift—whatever it might be—feels like work and becomes a job.
By the time I met Florian in 2018 (the love I had waited nearly 40 years for, which is another story) I was exhausted. Exhausted in my soul, in my spirit, in my emotions. For eight years I had worked two jobs, bootstrapped a company, waded through personal and professional tragedy and betrayal, and finished my novel at night and on weekends. I lost touch with inspiration, and more precisely, my heart.
My heart began to awake again with Florian…our relationship fulfills so many of my long-lost romantic desires. But nothing about our partnership has been ordinary or normal: We’ve moved back and forth between our two countries four times in two years, experienced culture shock, reverse culture shock, started and finished school, lived with family and friends—our things packed away in boxes in another country—and begun new jobs and business endeavors. Just after getting married our days were typically 12 hours straight. In the evenings, our main grace was cooking a gorgeous meal together for quality time and then crashing, only to wake up and do it all over again.
Not an ideal or dreamy way of beginning marriage…
Our desire was to grow spiritually and relationally, and in addition to school, we packed in relationship courses. All of it has been wonderful, but not particularly restful. Not only that, but it felt like the foundations of my heart were beginning to shake. It was difficult to accept his love and support.
Why?
I had made it through so many difficult things that my identity was in the struggle. I only knew how to not quit, move forward, forgive, start again, keep going…
When we finally arrived back in Germany in the summer of 2019, I felt my heart begin to come alive to a season and shut down toward the old, telling the 12-hour days, “I can’t do this anymore.” I didn’t want to write and I didn’t want to work. I only wanted to be creative… I kept asking, “Why the sudden change and lack of grace?”
It was as if the only answer I received back to my prayers was “REST.”
“The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.”
But what does that even mean? I thought, “I don’t have time nor do I have the freedom from my responsibilities as a business owner to do nothing.”
One afternoon this week I decided to jog along the pathways toward the forest near our village. The sky was cloudy and a light misty rain was falling. But the rain became so heavy that I couldn’t continue without becoming completely soaked, so I stopped and stood beneath a tree on the side of the path. I surveyed my surroundings: A hawk circled above me, and there before me was a gigantic willow tree alone in the field amidst the forest backdrop. I found myself reciting Psalm 23:
“There beneath the willow tree,
He spoke to me,”
There it was. He restores my soul. I’m literally living Psalm 23… Then I knew, “That’s what ‘rest’ means! That’s the key.”
Rest doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means giving your heart permission to choose how and when to do all that is required of you. It’s the difference between “I have to,” and “I want to.” If we don’t give ourselves permission to choose how we live our lives, we will feel trapped doing all of the “responsible” adult things. For so long I tried to make something happen for myself. “No one else is going to build my audience, create a successful business, find clients and get the job done.” But what is success? Checking emails late at night to make sure things happen in your timeline? I ran on the treadmill of life so long and so hard that I didn’t know how to stop—even in the midst of living a new dream with Florian.
If we first give ourselves permission to do the things that make our heart and our partner’s heart happy, take time to breathe, have vacation and contemplate, we find ourselves living life in the way we want to. Life doesn’t let us take a vacation from responsible adulting, but we are the ones in charge of our own work, social, familial and relationship boundaries.
Instead of life just happening, we can choose to happen to life.
We can initiate and direct how each day goes. Living intentionally is a powerful choice, yet not an easy one. Life is full and it’s difficult to stop the patterns of survival we may have created. The truth is that when we give ourselves a choice, we will find the grace to actually do the things we need to do because we’ll be working from a place of rest and freedom.
To me, in this season, that’s what true rest means. That is living Psalm 23.
There it was. He restores my soul. I’m literally living Psalm 23… Then I knew, “That’s what ‘rest’ means! That’s the key.”