Rest Is a Weapon

“God’s trying to tell you something,” my friend says pointedly, raising her eyebrows at me with a small smile playing about her lips. We walk out of the church and say our goodbyes, and I make my way slowly to my car. The afternoon is hot and breezy.

It is fall in North Texas. The temperatures plummet to the low nineties, fluffy clouds fill cerulean skies, and locals sigh with relief and nod to each other, saying, “Fall is practically here.” The drive back to work is short, but my friend’s question lingers long after I settle down at home for the evening.

God’s trying to tell you something.

As the words lay down with me for sleep, I drift off into bad dreams, dreams filled with now-familiar anger at what happened four weeks ago.

***

On that day in mid-summer, I unpack my clothes from my small suitcase and hurry through the house to make order out of self-imposed chaos. Walking out of the front office, I crash to the floor, screaming in pain. I have turned my left ankle, rolling it outward, ligaments stretching beyond their normal capacity. Getting up sends me into paroxysms of blinding pain.

A week later, I visit a back doctor for an adjustment unrelated to my foot. “Just my back, okay?” I say. He nods curtly, but curiosity gets the better of him. After he cracks my spine, he says, “Let me just look at your foot,” and before I know it, he’s yanked on it twice, hard, and I am swallowed up by pain. But I’m a people-pleaser, and so I say nothing as I sway unsteadily to my feet.

“You should feel better now,” he says. His face hard and unreadable, he takes my money, and I exit the office, knowing I will never return.

Days later, bluish daisies sprout along the back of my left foot and blue-green stars line the area below my toes; the skin around my ankle balloons out, and so does my panic. After several tests, the foot doctor says he cannot confirm that the hard pulls of the back doctor contributed to the torn ligaments in my foot.

“Feet are resilient,” he quips cheerfully. “It will heal soon. You should feel better about that.” Not feeling better at having my feelings so easily dismissed, I leave the doctor’s office breathing as calmly as I can, but I am bedeviled by his command. My pain leads to the creation of several scripts I’ll read to the doctors later, filled with unflinching honesty and wit like Mary Karr. Or Dorothy Parker.

***

Considering my friend’s words in light of the sprain and the second injury, I wonder about God. Some folks say he speaks through all things, so we should be on the lookout for his message.  Does that mean I look for God in the turning of my ankle, or the patriarchal system that encouraged a White man to adjust my foot without permission?  Or do I look for the message in how I reacted in quiet obedience to a male in authority? Or in the anger I feel as I gingerly move around my house?

I am lucky because I’m off work during this time. My pain makes it clear that rest is the best weapon for healing. Daily, I practice centering prayer to help my body focus on peace instead of anger at what’s been lost. Naps come easily. Direction for how and when to confront the doctor do not yet come.

In prayer, I hear the word rest again the next day, and again the next. It also comes in the voices of family, friends, and neighbors. I’m told the commandment for Sabbath in the Old Testament is the one most written about, and for good reason. Pharaoh’s directives to the Jews to work mirror today’s cultural myth that to produce without ceasing is divine, that one’s worth lies solely in what one does, not in who one is, or in whose one is.

My inflamed ligaments and exhausted state pivot me back to God. I read in Ecclesiastes that “Better is one handful with some rest than two hands full of toil and chasing the wind” (v. 4:6 NET). I recognize that the compulsive desire to be defined by my work rather than by my identity in Christ is, perhaps, normal in a culture enslaved to the spirit of endless work. But I resist through rest and understand the message of the turned ankle.

I have missed out on much of my own life by dancing to the beat of endless striving. Did God make me turn my ankle so I could heal at a deeper level? It’s the wrong question, I think. The better question is this: How can I allow the God of rest to number my days instead of being defined by frenetic activity?

This ragamuffin knows that God wants my presence more than he wants my production, my prestige, or my paycheck. Rest is the resistance to the hammer of more; healing comes in the spirit as well as in blood and bone. While it is seductive to believe my worth lies in what I do, now when those thoughts clamor for attention, I stop and take a breath. I wait. I remember to whom I belong in peaceful repose and surrender to the One who is the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the beat in my heart.

Jenn Zatopek is a recovering perfectionist, writer, and licensed therapist. She has a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Tarleton State University, and has been accepted to Brite Divinity School to pursue a degree in theology. Her work has been featured in SheLoves Magazine, The Glorious Table, and Panther City Review. Jenn believes in radical kindness and her heroes include Fred Rogers, Henri Nouwen, and Brene Brown. You can find her writing about the intersection of psychology and theology at theholyabsurd.com and Instagram at
@theholyabsurd.

Photograph © Sylvie Tittel, used with permission