The Art of Homemaking: Learn to Rest

“When you get tired, learn to rest, but don’t quit.”

Several weeks ago I found myself one afternoon having a breakdown. It was a week where everything went wrong. The kids had so many things going on but yet were not willing to get any of them done.  It was end of term (enough said). Projects, homework galore. They were also constantly fighting with each other about the most inane things. I couldn’t get dinner on the table to save my life. I forgot appointments. I was done. And done. And done.

So, I did the only thing I could think of. I went upstairs and parked myself on my dark closet floor and cried–the ugly cry. It was about 20 minutes later where I finally picked myself up off the floor and resolved to go down and heat up some water for pasta. I went through the motions of the rest of the day but that night I decided I needed to get my act together.

So I began to make a list….that would surely help me.

But the thought came to me. “You don’t need a list. You need to rest.”

Rest? For the love, I don’t have time to rest. I have too much going on, I argued with myself.

But I knew inside that my inner voice was right. I needed to rest. To slow down and re-charge myself.

I think as women we try to do it all, we’ve got this. We’ve been doing this for years. But we need rest just as much (or sometimes more) than those toddlers or teenagers do. We really do need to learn to rest.

So for this week, if you do nothing else nice for yourself—-just rest. Give yourself 20 minutes, or an hour. Take a nap, read a book, go on a walk. It’s okay. Just rest.

~elizabeth