I’m back! Last week, my husband and I went to Breckenridge, Colorado for a ski trip. I am exhausted.
What? I just had a week away from work, kids, home and everything that is the normal rat race of life, and I’m still wiped out? Actually, I’m more tired than I was before I left. I’m tempted to blame the jet lag (which is real – I have a terrible time adjusting to traveling back from the west). But that wouldn’t be the truth. It’s not just jet lag. Let me back up and tell you the story.
What a view!
The week before we left, I worked like crazy to get caught up at work and leave the house stocked up for the kids to have what they needed while I was away. We spent the night before packing and I went to bed around 10. But he stayed up until 2 am and accidentally woke me when he finally came to bed. I got up at 445 am to get ready to get to the airport and had to drag him out of bed. Rough start. After almost missing the flight (because we stopped for breakfast), we flew to Denver uneventfully.
Once we rented a car, drove two more hours to Breckenridge, shopped for a few groceries, reserved my ski equipment and got some dinner, we fell asleep at 8 pm and slept for 12 hours. (He said we should stay up later that night to adjust to the time change, but I won that argument). We got up the next morning and headed out to the slopes. The first thing I noticed was that I was short of breath. Why? Because we were 10,000 feet above sea level, and I wasn’t acclimated to the lower oxygen levels. But we went up and down the mountain most of that day and the next. I took two days off from skiing, then went back out one more day before we flew back. We had some great dinners out and spent some restoration time in the hot tubs. On the days I didn’t ski, I walked around town and did a little shopping, and I had a facial and a massage. All good things.
Yep, that’s me…
So why am I so tired? Sure, my body had to work overtime with the time change and altitude, but really, that wasn’t so hard in the week we were away. I didn’t get altitude sickness and I didn’t get up particularly early in the mornings. I didn’t stay up too late either. But here’s what I realized: While I was taking a break from work and normal life, this was an excursion. An experience. A trip full of recreation and activities. It was not rest.
What do I mean? Let me tell you a story. I was standing at the base of the mountain while my husband was getting his snowboard on, and I overheard a man yelling at his son. He and his wife were standing with the boy, who was having trouble getting his skis onto his boots. The father was aggravated because he thought his son wasn’t paying attention and that was why he couldn’t get his skis on. He snapped at the boy, telling him to focus. The child tried again and again to get his skis to connect without success. From where I was standing, it was clear why: he had too much snow under his boots and needed to knock off the snow before his skis would attach. Neither of his parents saw this. So he kept trying, and they waited impatiently. The boy was about four years old.
That interaction bothered me for a long time. You know why? Because I’m sure that I do that to my kids all the time – get frustrated and short tempered at something they are doing when really, they’re trying and there’s something I’m not seeing that could fix the problem. I’m also sure that that couple planned that experience with plans for wholesome family fun. They probably didn’t plan to be on vacation snapping at each other! And maybe they were local and weren’t overtired or over-scheduled. But I bet they were. Every time we go on a trip I notice the same thing – people on vacation are running around as fast as they can, filling up their free time with activities and “fun”. The hotels have flyers for all the excursions and activities available because people are looking for things to do. Make sure you don’t miss anything! Then after the activities are the “happy hours” with incentives to blow off steam and drink to relax. Work hard, play hard – isn’t that the American way?
My husband, getting ready to snowboard down the mountain!
It is. But we are also some of the most activity driven, busy, and un-rested people on the planet. We don’t sleep enough for sure, but we also don’t really understand what rest is. Every waking moment is spent doing something, starting with checking our smartphone as we wake up. We then run from thing to thing, maybe sitting still for a movie or other screen time, then falling into the bed at night (if we didn’t fall asleep on the couch in front of the movie!). We justify this restlessness because we spend so much time working, that when we are away we cram our days full of our recreation so we don’t miss out. But we don’t rest.
What is rest? It’s slowing down enough to know when your body is ready to sleep and then getting up when you feel good getting out of bed in the morning. It’s having nothing scheduled to do all day. It’s sitting and staring up at the clouds. It’s going for a walk, not for exercise, just to be outside and feel the breeze and notice what’s around you. It’s reading a book until you want to do something else. Eating a meal happens because you’re hungry, not because it’s meal time. Does any of this sound familiar? It’s fairly foreign to me too. This just isn’t the pace I keep often enough.
But I want to find rest. Why? It’s not just because I’m tired now. Rest is a time of renewal, a time to stoke the fires of creativity. Rest is when freedom from constant movement and task completion happens. When we run from thing to thing, there’s no space to process and understand our experiences, much less to move forward intentionally. It’s the rest time when we find the meaning in our moments and discover the direction in which we should go. Life without rest feels chaotic and haphazard, too fast to notice the joy and beauty infused throughout our busy days.
And I want to help my kids find rest too. Today’s kids tend to have less rest time than ever, with all the sports and extracurricular activities in addition to the constant race to be top of the class. And they gain a lot by being exposed to the lessons and rigor of education. But they are also overscheduled, and we can help. We can limit their screen time, carve out time for free reading, and kick them outdoors without a plan for their play.
But what about us? My usual day starts with a list of things to do and ends with planning the list for the next day. Coffee is added if I’m overtired (instead of noticing the need for caffeine as a warning sign). The list does not generally include rest. But that needs to change. Even if I can’t block time to be free daily, I need to start finding the spaces where I can, instead of filling up every available opening with something to get done. Everything can’t get done in one day. If I can get that clear in my head, then I can feel good about making space for rest in my life. That will be the difference between racing through this life, and really living it.
Have you found a balance of rest and activity in your life? How do you find space to rest? Please share in the comments below!