Do you find that once October hits life begins to feel a bit frantic? Schedules fill up and to-do lists run long. Home and family life can quickly begin to turn a little chaotic and feelings of overwhelm can start creeping in. For someone who loves people but loves to be home even more, that gets old really fast. So this year, for the month of November, The Sweet Tea Sisters are going to try to engage in one or two simple things each week that will encourage us to slow down just a bit and enjoy a sweet moment of rest here and there.
Here’s a list of ten things that can be done anytime during the next five weeks–whenever it fits the schedule–but no pressure allowed! The goal here is not to add extra work or expense to the budget, but to find a few simple things that, with minimal effort, cost or prep work, will hopefully energize our spirit and bring moments of rest in the chaos. There is no set time frame for this–there isn’t a particular day of the week or even a particular week to do any of the activities. If it makes your life easier you could schedule some, while others you may decide on at the last minute. You don’t even need to do all ten–five is the goal, but you know the SweetTea Sisters like to have OPTIONS and sometimes we might feel like doing a little extra!
Any of these things can be done by yourself, with your family, or with a group of friends. Mix it up! Welcome to The Sweet Tea Sisters 5 in 5 Restful Fall Challenge, and we’d love to have you join us!
Here’s what’s on our list and some thoughts about each one.
Eat dinner by candlelight This does not mean you need to make a fancy dinner or set the table with cloth napkins and wine goblets–but you certainly could if that’s what will bring you joy without stress! There’s a good chance we will dish up our food in the kitchen and take our plates to the dining room table, or maybe even our living room coffee table! But there’s just something about candlelight that makes even the most humble thing feel special and relaxing about candlelight. In fact this sounds like the perfect way to elevate a pizza and paper plate evening!
Send someone a card or letter of encouragement Stopping to take the time to think about and then tell someone how grateful you are for someone is usually a sure-fire way to put yourself in a better frame of mind (and heart). Instead of focusing on all the chaos and to-do lists swirling around, take a moment to be thankful for the blessing of the people God has placed in your life.
Movie Night We love a good movie and sometimes a mid-week movie with a big bowl of popcorn sounds delightful! A pile of blankets and pillows, your favorite pajamas, and a cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream and sprinkles are a great way to enjoy 2 hours.
Go to bed early Pull out a sleep mask, diffuse a little essential oils and hit the hay 30-45 minutes earlier than usual with the mindset to do a little relaxing breathing while thanking God for some of the things you’re thankful for as you fall asleep.
Buy a bouquet of flowers Fresh flowers are a great way to lift drooping spirits. Pick up a bunch or two from your local grocery and divide them into a few smaller arrangements to place all around your home to bring spots of life and color when the world outside is getting darker and colder earlier and earlier. If you have a florist you love and it fits your budget you can get a great bouquet from there as well. (If you want to be even more extra, grab a extra bouquet and share it with a friend!)
Take a leisurely bath or shower When it’s chilly outside, warm up with water! Use all the pretty smelling lotions and potions, light a few candles, play some soothing music and soak up the moisture until you feel sufficiently pruney. (Shaving your legs is an option, not a necessity!)
Schedule coffee or tea with a friend In person or over a video call, in a home or at a cafe, just schedule some time for an uninterrupted heart to heart chat with a dear friend. Make sure to include some belly laughs if at all possible!
Game Night Invite a few people to get together to play a few games or assemble a puzzle. No need to make a big meal–a potluck hot cocoa bar is fun and simple!
Read Put the phone away, turn off the TV, slip into your favorite cozies, and spend a little time reading whatever you love…magazines, scientific journals, biographies, chick-lit, novels, gossip rags…whatever will give your brain a little break!
Eat dessert Bake it, pick it up at the grocery, or get it from your favorite bakery, but indulge in your favorite dessert. Slow down and really enjoy every bite!
None of these things are hard, magical, or even unusual, but when done with intention, a thankful heart, and a mind to enjoy them fully, they might bring some much needed rest into the middle of what can quickly become a season long to-do list.
Do you need to find a few minutes of rest this season? Follow us on Instagram, check out our stories throughout the month of November to follow along, and then join us in this challenge! Use our list or make your own. Either way, we’d love to hear what you do– tag @thesweetteasisters and use #STS5in5restfulfallchallenge to share your peaceful moments on Instagram.
There are a lot of messages we receive from culture today and it seems as though most of them are extremes, with a right vs wrong mentality. Right vs Left, Legalistic vs Freedom, Black vs White, Conservative vs Liberal, Sinner vs Saint, Chosen vs Not-chosen. Think my way? Two thumbs up for you. Think differently? You’re canceled.
One of the most popular extremes I’m seeing right now is the idea of “enough”. Society is waving a banner that screams “YOU are enough! Don’t change for anyone! God loves you just as you are!” And Christians are jumping on board with both feet. On the surface, it feels like a great place to land. What could be wrong with accepting ourselves and each other without judgment and condemnation? A few things, actually.
For one thing, there is no growth in the “I am enough” attitude. If you are enough as you are, right now, there is no need or desire to do or become better as human beings for yourself or the good of society as a whole. But secondly, the truth is we aren’t enough. And we can’t be. If we were, we would be sinless and Jesus wouldn’t have had to come to die on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin. It would be so simple for us to fix all the things wrong in the world if we were enough. But if no one needed growth or to do better would there even be things wrong in the world? The idea of a personal “enough” is a trick of Satan to keep us from facing sin head-on and growing in our faith.
And here is where the other extreme of “Enough” comes in. The pendulum swing to the opposite side. The voice that says, “You are not enough, you will never be enough, nothing you ever do will be enough, you are worthless.” This is where Satan keeps you mired down in a stagnant swamp of self-loathing and doubt, your thoughts held captive in a lie that prevents you from even trying to find hope and help because you believe you do not deserve it.
I don’t find either of these ideas in the bible without taking verses out of context. It’s been my experience that the answer to most hard questions rarely lies at one end of a pendulum. Most often, in my opinion, we find our answer, Jesus, right in the middle of all the mess.
When I bought into the idea that I was enough, it was a double-edged sword. One edge left me exhausted; cut, and bleeding in an attempt to prove I WAS, in fact, enough. Prove I didn’t need help from anyone, that I could do all the things on my own. When I couldn’t do all the things I just kept thinking I only needed a better system; surely it was a time-management thing. Or I just needed to understand my personality better. Maybe it was that I just needed a better weight loss program. I lived swirling around in the idea that if I could just change this or that, things would finally be under control. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter what things I tweaked, I just couldn’t do it.
The other edge of the “I am enough” sword was dull and it lazed about in the idea of being accepted just as I was, and if there was fault found in something I did or said it had more to do with an issue in you than with any issue with me. Excuses abounded and any change needed, in action or attitude, was all the burden of the other person. My pride was excused as a moral high-ground. My laziness was rebranded as the time-off I deserved. My selfishness was disguised as self-care. My harsh words were called “just speaking truth”. I needed no self-improvement and people could take me or leave me, it mattered little. This thinking left me spiritually out of shape and bruised by life and in this place, my faith and character saw little to no growth.
I’ve wrestled and fought with all the aspects of “enough” and no matter which lie I was stuck in I ended up ashamed and depressed, feeling like a failure in every aspect of my life. Until a friend reminded me of Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Rest is what I longed for, what my soul craved. I needed a rest from the world–all its demands, all its lies, and all its extremes. But how does one find the “sweet spot” of resting well and enough? I don’t have it mastered yet, but I’ve found the sweet spot of Godly rest lies somewhere in the middle of enough and not enough. Knowing I am not enough, bringing it to Jesus anyway, resting in Him to help me, and seeing first-hand that He IS enough.
Jesus tells us in Matthew to ”come to {Him}”. That’s where we start. Not with us. With Him. “I’m enough” is true when it’s the idea that I don’t have to “get myself together” before I can come to God. He already knows that we are weary and burdened. I don’t have to bring my best all shined up pretty for Him to love and accept me. I get to come to Him in all my weakness, all my ugly, all my sin. He asks us to bring all to Him and then He will give us the rest we so desperately desire. “I am enough” is true, but it’s also incomplete.
When we come to Him we exchange our yoke and our burden for His. A yoke rests on one’s shoulders and one takes direction from it. And a burden is still something we have to carry. This is not a work-free zone. I’m not free to let someone else carry my burden, but remember, He promises His yoke is easy and His burden light. Our rest comes because where we are weak He is strong. Where we fall short, He fills in the rest. He shines up our rusty places and presents them as perfect and new. Where “I am enough” fails, Jesus does not; He is always enough.
Resting doesn’t mean not changing, not growing though, and growth isn’t always easy or painless. In rest, there can be discomfort sometimes, but there is also healing. When I receive the gift of a massage, I am prepared to enjoy quiet and rest all the while knowing my therapist is going to find each painful knot in my back and poke and prod until they become soft and relaxed under her fingertips. The momentary discomfort gives way to increased movement and blood flow later.
When I sit in the salon chair to receive a refreshing pedicure, sometimes the nail technician has to cut out a bit of tender, ingrown nail that has made it painful to walk. I grip the armrests as they dig and cut, my toe smarting from their tools, but knowing later I will enjoy the benefit of not only lovely toes but more importantly, walking with ease.
So, where do we get our ideas about resting, enough, yokes, and burdens? We “learn from {Him}” and “{He} is humble and gentle in heart”. To learn from Him, we have to study Him, and we do that by spending time in the Bible, God’s holy Word.
When I was in high school, I had a Sunday School teacher who often talked about the theory of “garbage in, garbage out”, meaning what we consume will be what spills out of us later. We can fill up our minds and bellies with the “truth” we find on social media and the news; we can carry their burden of enough and take our directions in life from them, or we can spend time with Jesus and get our truth and direction from what He tells us in the Bible.
I was talking with my youngest daughter one day after having recently spent the weekend with my sister who lives on the other side of the states. Whatever comment I made was accompanied by a facial expression and my daughter’s eyes got wide, and she laughingly said, “That was Aunt Shannon, right there!” What a great compliment to me!
Do I act and sound like my sister because I’ve lost myself? Is it because she demands I do? Of course not. It happens naturally because I love her and whenever the opportunity arises, I spend time with her. I’ve known her for a while now, and because I’ve spent so much time with her, I have unconsciously picked up some (ok, many!) of her mannerisms–so much so it spills out even when we are apart.
The same thing happens when we spend time in God’s word. We grow to love Christ more. We want to spend more time with Him and slowly, we begin to look and act more like Him. The things that matter to Him matter to us and the things that grieve Him grieve us. We begin to see the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, grow in our lives. Not out of compulsion, because we have to, but because we just can’t help it! We have filled ourselves up with His wisdom and truth, learned His attributes, resulting in His wisdom, truth, and attributes later spilling out of us–no matter what the world bumps into us with.
Much like being with my sister brings rest to my heart, spending time with Jesus brings rest to my soul. I know my sister loves me and wants the best for me, so she gets to speak the hard truths to me. And because I know God loves me and has the best plans for me, I can trust when He begins pruning away at things that are unnecessary and not beneficial for me. I allow His word to speak hard truths into my life and know it is for my good. I can rest in His care.
We come to God and He works to TRANSFORM our lives and our desires. He does the heart-changing. Resting doesn’t mean striving in our own strength and on our own works for what only God can do. Our rest rests in His strength and what He has already accomplished through the finished work of the cross. Come to Him, learn from Him, and He will give us rest.
When we sleep at night, our body is busy repairing itself from the efforts of the day–it’s our body’s own little “sabbath” if you will. And when everything is in-tune and we have rested well, we awake alert and strong, ready to face the day.
I’m learning, when my face is turned toward God, He won’t abandon me to get fat and lazy, neither will He work me unmercifully. Little by little I’m learning to rest well, by resting only in HIM. In His word. In His truth. In His power and might. I’m hanging on while He cuts and prunes at my tender spots, knowing the resulting fruit will be sweet and plentiful. I endure the growing pains as my roots grow deeper and my footing steady and sure, even when things around me blow wildly out of control.
So, when I feel like the things I’ve picked up in my day to day life are too heavy to bear or like I can’t go a step farther, I remember that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. When I start to slip back into the patterns of “I am enough” I begin asking myself questions.
When was the last time I spent time with Jesus?
Am I carrying His burden and wearing His yoke or one I picked up elsewhere?
Have I come to Jesus for help or am I trying to bear them on my own?
Am I spilling out God’s truth or the truth I find on social media?
Am I being honest with myself?
Will the choice I’m making right now help me serve others better?
Will this help grow my faith and dependence on Jesus?
Is what I’m consuming nutrient-dense or is it an empty calorie dessert?
How is my daily diet balanced?
I don’t have any of this mastered, but If I answer these questions truthfully, I can usually figure out what burden or yoke I need to bring back to Jesus to exchange.
Friend, if you are weary and in need of rest, bring your burdens to Jesus and trust that He cares for you. You are not alone. You have a friend like no other who loves you enough to give you life-changing rest.
When is our enough, enough? When it’s found in Jesus.
