Finding Sacred Rest in a Culture of Burnout
(a moment of beautiful rest from a busy week that my son and daughter in law gave me)
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." —Matthew 11:28
As I sat across from a good friend her mascara was smudged, her hands were trembling as she fumbled with her keys. Stress was written into the lines across her forehead. When I asked if she was okay, she crumbled in tears.
"I'm so tired," she whispered. "Not just need-more-sleep tired. I am soul tired."
I recognized her exhaustion immediately. I’d worn it myself for years like a second layer of clothes, hiding a bundle of burdens underneath. The weight of being everything to everyone until there's nothing left to give. All of the endless labor that fills our days but never our hearts.
Are you carrying this same weariness today?
We can so quickly get caught up in our culture that praises exhaustion as a badge of honor. We measure our worth by our busy calendars and completed tasks, in the number of people we've helped and all of the problems we've solved.
We convince ourselves if we can do"just one more thing" we will be caught up:
Just one more email before bed
Just one more volunteer position at church
Just one more activity for the children
Just one more social media platform to manage
Just one more family member who needs our care
And underneath it all lurks a whispered lie: If you rest, you're lazy. If you pause, you're failing someone.
I believed this lie for decades, filling every moment with productivity as if my worth depended on it. My Bible gathered dust while my to-do lists multiplied. My prayer life became hurried requests for the strength to keep going rather than intimate moments lingering with God.
Then several years ago, my body made the decision my mind kept pushing away and refused to make.
It was a stressful season filled with ministry strains and I woke up with my body aching. My torso burned with welts that felt like they were burning through my skin. The thought of navigating one more hard thing, solving one more problem, or meeting one more need felt impossible.
The doctor's diagnosis was clinical: shingles.
God's diagnosis went deeper: I had forgotten I was human with a body, mind and soul that needed to be loved and cared for.
Not just a person who takes care of everyone else.
But one who knows who I truly am—a beloved daughter, designed by a Creator who intentionally rested, not because He needed to, but because He was establishing a rhythm for us.
I recently learned how the Hebrew, the word for rest—menucha—means more than the absence of work. It actually is an active peace, a tranquility that restores and rejuvenates. It's not what's left when everything else is done; it's what makes everything else possible.
I'm learning, slowly and imperfectly, that rest isn't something I earn after completing a whole bunch of tasks—it's a sacred space where God restores what the world has depleted.
Rest looks different than I once thought:
It's putting down my phone and sitting outside
It's saying no to good opportunities so I can say yes to the best ones
It's allowing myself to be delighted by small moments rather than always striving for bigger ones
It's remembering that my worth isn't tied to my productivity but to my belovedness
I'm discovering that rest isn't selfishness—it's stewardship of the one body, mind, and soul I’ve been given.
Last week, I sat on my back as the morning light began to rise. I noticed flowers in my garden beginning to bloom and thought about how I can’t make them grow or bloom no matter how much I try but God can. And that’s the problem sometimes I think I am responsible for things I’m not and I miss what God can do when I takeover. For those meditative moments, I did nothing ‘productive’ at all. I simply watched the world wake up and remembered that God does this everyday. It’s been happening long before I existed and it would continue long after I'm gone.
The revelation was both humbling and freeing: the world doesn't depend on my constant motion.
Precious friend, what would happen if you gave yourself permission to breathe again? To step off the treadmill of endless doing? To remember that you were loved into existence by a God who delights in you apart from anything you accomplish?
What if your exhaustion isn't just a time problem but a holy invitation to remember what matters most?
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)
The invitation stands—not to a life of idleness, but to a rhythm of sacred rest that enables authentic growth. A life where productivity flows from God’s fullness rather than our emptiness, where giving comes from His abundance instead of our depletion.
Your weariness is not indication of failure. It might just be the most honest you've been with yourself in years.
Love and Blessings,
Ruthann
This Month's Soul-Care Practice
Sacred Rest Inventory
Take fifteen minutes with a journal. Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left side, list what drains you completely. On the right, list what genuinely restores you. Now look at your calendar for the coming week. Have you made space for at least three items from your "restoration" list? If not, what needs to change to make that possible?
"He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul." —Psalm 23:2-3
A heartfelt ask for your help:
As many of you know my desire is to traditionally publish soon and God is opening doors but one thing I need is to ask you, my community, to Forward this email tho three friends who might need this message and invite them into our community here.
I would greatly appreciate this and want to thank you ahead for your help to get my words into the world.