When God Insists on Rest

Have you ever felt certain of something only to have that certainty completely overturned? If you want to make God laugh, the saying goes, just tell him your plans.

This is a frequent story in Scripture. Moses knows he will live out his days as a shepherd in the hills of Midian—until he spots a bush bursting with flame that doesn’t burn up. Esther knows she cannot speak to the king uninvited—until Mordecai convicts her with his wise and challenging words. Paul knows persecuting Christians is the right thing to do—until God breaks through to him on the road to Damascus.

Christianity is a faith of holy interruptions, of God stopping us in our tracks to teach us, again and again, that despite our desires for and illusions of control, we are not the potter; we are the clay.

When my husband and I decided to try for a third baby this past winter, we talked through what another pregnancy might mean for our family. We pondered what it would mean for our vocations—we serve together at a church in southern California, and I had a book manuscript due in just a few months.

I spoke from what I knew, having carried our two boys in my body for forty-one weeks apiece. “I’m a bit tired in the first trimester,” I said, “and a little queasy. The last month of pregnancy is rough, but the book will be done by then, and I can make sure to work ahead on sermons and projects so nothing suffers at church.”

We prayed and discerned and “pulled the goalie,” as they say, and before either of us really expected it, we found ourselves staring, open-mouthed, at a positive pregnancy test.

“Whoa,” said Daryl, “that was fast.” We looked at the calendar and plotted our course: I cooked extra meals to freeze for the family before the expected first-trimester queasiness arrived and we made plans to celebrate the holidays at home instead of in cross-country transit with a tiny newborn. We knew how the next nine months would go.

Except, we didn’t. We so didn’t. Before the six-week mark, I developed nausea like I’d never experienced before. I began throwing up all the time. I bolted from the room during committee meetings, excused myself between the opening prayer and the sermon in worship, and fed our sons Happy Meals every day, breathing through my nose so I wouldn’t have to smell anything.

Cooking was out of the question. Staying up past 8 p.m. was out of the question. Doing anything but surviving became out of the question.

Before conceiving Baby #3, I’d read about poor Duchess Kate, suffering through round three of hyperemesis gravidarum, a sickness she’d faced with her first two pregnancies, and thought, “Whew, I’m glad that isn’t me.” Turns out every pregnancy is unique, and this one was rocking my world.

I cried out for relief, for help, for respite, for the ability to eat something—anything besides rice crackers and the occasional grilled cheese sandwich. I cried in my midwife’s office, on my friends’ shoulders, at our small group, in Daryl’s arms.

In her book A Faithful Farewell, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre chronicles what it’s like to die of cancer, writing that the nausea is the worst thing of all.

“See?” I said, jabbing my finger at the text, showing the book to Daryl, who’d uncomplainingly taken on every single household task while I spent my evenings and days off curled up in bed writhing with discomfort.

My devotional life was almost nonexistent, replaced instead with streaming reruns of The Office and The West Wing—anything to distract me just a moment from the next bathroom run.

Yet one night, exhausted and angry, I found the ancient words of Psalm 23 running through my head.

I know this psalm, God, I said. If you’re trying to make me feel better, it isn’t going to work. Psalm 23 was so familiar it had become stale. And yet the words continued, as if God was leaning over me, gently whispering, Shh, just listen.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures . . . (Psalm 23:1–2 NKJV).

In all the times I’d read that psalm, quoted that psalm, read that psalm at funerals and to my sons at bedtime, I’d never stopped at the words makes me. They’d never been so true.

As a doer—a good Protestant who works hard and crosses things off the list and then makes another list to cross more things off—I’d never been so close to the end of myself. I could do nothing more, nothing but lie down in the presence of God.

Sometimes the grace of God forces us to rest. Whether this rest is born from suffering—the loss of a job or a marriage or a loved one, waning of health or strength—or a season of Sabbath, God is faithful to meet us within it.

A couple of winters ago our little family traveled to my parents’ home in northern Wisconsin. One night when an ice storm descended, we lost power and gathered around the fireplace for warmth, our cell phones piled uselessly on the kitchen table.

We talked for hours, my sisters and their husbands and our collective gaggle of kids, my parents and Daryl and me, warmed by the glow of the fire, eating macaroni and cheese we cooked by melting snow. Normally the night would have been filled with noise and activity, a movie to watch, social media to check. Instead the house was hushed and holy. God made us lie down.

When has God made you lie down? What did that season teach you about quietness, trust, and sacred interruptions?

Courtney Ellis is a mom of three, speaker, and author of Uncluttered: Free Your Space, Free Your Schedule, Free Your Soul and serves as a Presbyterian pastor in southern California, alongside her husband, Daryl. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or at www.courtneybellis.com.

Photograph © Kinga Cichewicz, used with permission