There are no dust police.
No smudge cops, no laundry laws, no fridge patrol.
I tell myself this when the bones moan and the joints ache and the sun is setting and there are still miles long and deep to go before I sleep and I’m digging in the freezer for a pork roast for the night shift of the crockpot.
I tell myself this, that I can’t go to jail over toilet bowls and there is grace and a smile behind all the ethereal veil and I can just rest. That God’s will for a day is never to shoulder a burden but to come rest on His shoulder. The Farmer hears me muttering into the freezer.
The Farmer’s with the bills and and he hears me and his voice from the study fills the vaulting space under the peaks with the worn cobwebs unfastening, and he tells me, “It all looks good in here, Ann.” I shake my head and laugh because this is the best option in the moment. Maybe laughter is nearly always the best option. Bone medicine. Fighting soul-porisis.
Levi ripped up the back of his leg with a bike chain this afternoon. Tonight after dinner, he sat with his leg in a soup pot of salt water. His tears could have almost filled that pot. I had the phone in hand to call the library today and pay for “Water Sky
There are seventeen minutes until I can fill the tub to the brim, seventeen minutes before the knees can sink into the heat. There are seventeen minutes left till the house darkens and all the noise ebbs away. I wrest the roast into the crockpot and try to count blessings instead of minutes.
“Thank you, Lord, that I can’t go to jail for toilet bowl violations. Thank you, Lord, that there are no dust police and I can rest. Thank you, Lord for 17 minutes….” I don’t turn to see if the The Farmer hears me. I laugh to myself. The medicine goes down smooth.
It’s almost thirty seven minutes before I make it to the bathtub and I gave thanks through nearly half of those minutes, and those were the far better half, the rest being just exacerbated fatigue. The water is hot.
I crank the windows open over the tub, one to the north and one to the east, straight open out into the black, and the night air and the hot water pulls all the weariness out of the bones like a cork released from the neck of a bottle. I exhale.
And on the intake, I inhale it, the dark heaviness of the orchard, the swaths of hay drying out summer in the field across the road.
The crickets orchestrate July’s crescendo. I lay back and listen to the woods. A cross draught, cool, crosses me, the folds of the night fanning.
The rest of God is primarily a working rest, for though He completed creation and rested on the seventh day, He knew His work was never complete, that there was more work ongoing, and His rest was never a permanence but a pause. I’ve but paused in the tub.
These are right and necessary, pauses. Who can make a song without rests? There will be more song in the morning, fresh mercies, and God will let us again undertake the unfinished work of the Kingdom and this is good. The winds lilts and lifts the branches of the spruce trees. I think about tomorrow. It’s work and refrain and the dust. Rest is never how a body relaxes but how a mind lies down into Jesus. No matter how the hands fly, there is always rest when our interior gazes on Jesus. He is our rest.
The crickets hush.
The tap drips. I don’t count minutes. I will take back the library book in the morning. The moon is caught in the top of the spruce outside my window and it’s blue light is sliding straight down. “Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life,” wrote Rachel Carson.
I wonder what it is like for those who dwell with the Beauty and the Mystery of the heavens who took on flesh and said He’d never leave us alone?
My bones feel strong.
The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” ~Ex. 33:14
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Part of a series on Rest:
Part 1: 3 Ways to Rest Today (and stop the push)
Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.To read the entire series of spiritual practices
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