You probably read the title of this post and laughed, maybe raised your eyebrows at the thought or spit your cold coffee across the room in disbelief.
The words ‘rest’ and ‘mom’ don’t really seem to go together especially if you are waist-deep in the toddler/baby years. But I’m here — as a mom who gets awakened by kids every night — to tell you rest and sleep are different. A rested mom might still be sleep deprived and a mom getting 8+ hours of sleep a night could be lacking rest.
You see, somehow we’ve confused rest and sleep and made ourselves believe they have to be the same. Yes, we sometimes substitute the word ‘rest’ for ‘sleep’ {I do this with my youngest hoping to trick her into laying down. “We’re just going to take a little rest.” She hasn’t fallen for it yet.} But rest also means ‘refreshing ease or inactivity after exertion.”
In short, rest is the opposite of working, not necessarily the opposite of being awake.
There’s a chance you agree with me that rest doesn’t mean sleeping. But you might still be wondering how a mom can attain this inactivity. Laundry, cooking, cleaning, possibly working and/or homeschooling, errands, etc. The life of a mom is usually about busyness. There’s always something to be done.
And here’s where I think we have room to rest: realizing we can’t do everything and making room for something we love.
I truly believe our struggle with comparison robs us of more rest than our children. {Read that line again.}
Let me give you an example. It’s super easy to see people baking, decorating, gardening, sewing, etc. and feel like you must do all those things to be a great mom. So you set out to make bread every morning, supply every room with cozy throw pillows and blankets, have a garden perfectly manicured and producing flowers or vegetables in every season, sewing quilts and clothes and….
Suddenly, all the time you aren’t busy with kids is filled with things you may not love doing or even need to do but because you compare yourself to ‘that perfect mom on social media’ you feel like you aren’t doing enough.
But the truth is, no one can do everything. And even though the home/lifestyle mom blogs seem to be perfect at everything, they probably don’t have homemade bread at every meal. They might not be homeschooling. They might hire a cleaning service. And maybe they don’t enjoy reading, painting, knitting, watching TV, or other things that you consider restful. I honestly know people who enjoy baking and find it relaxing. I know people who can spend hours working in their garden. One mom’s torment is another mom’s rest.
So the point is to discover what you find restful and make time for it. At first, I thought this was extremely selfish of me. But taking an hour or two each week to focus on something I love actually energizes me to get back to my family and serve them. And I feel rested — even if I’m still tired — and not frazzled from constant chaos and noise.
How do you make time in a packed schedule? You make time for what’s important to you. So during naptime, you sit and paint instead of folding laundry. When your kids are in the tub, you sit on the floor and read. You might need to get creative but there is time to break away and breathe. And I’m not saying every nap time or free moment is spent on yourself to the detriment of your housework. But we shouldn’t press on with what we “have to do” until we burn out and snap.
Rest isn’t checking out. It’s not having to take a nap. It’s not neglecting what you have to do to keep the family fed and clean. It’s seeing where you have a few moments and stepping back. It’s taking time to do something you love.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash