Mrs. Martin, she was my grade 2 teacher, and she said I couldn’t keep any rhythm to save my life.

She’d be standing there in that red pleated dress of hers, tapping glossy black patent leather pumps:

“For there to be any real rhythm — there has to be real rests. You’ve got to listen know where the rests come,” and she tried to show my little grade 2 self in my scuffed up Mary Janes and green polyester pants, how to clap it out.

Beat, beat — rest. Beat, beat — rest. 

But I’ll just straight up confess that I never quite got the hang of the rhythm of music and moves, and I am far older now than Mrs. Martin was then — but when I saw Mrs. Martin the other week in the produce section of Zehrs grocery, checking out the firmness of the tomatoes, I wished I’d been brave enough to tell her what I kinda get now:

Life beats you down unless you get the rhythm of the rests. 

Wished I’d slipped up beside Mrs. Martin and helped her pick out the best tomatoes and told her how I’m still a slow learner, still learning how to still, so I hear the music in rhythm of things — still realizing:

Rest is a rhythm
you have to keep
so your soul can breathe
all the notes your life was made to sing.

Rest is a rhythm
you have to keep
so your soul can breathe
all the notes your life was made to sing.

Because …

Iftherearenospacesandpausesofrest —-

life loses its meaning.

But?  If we make S P A C E  in the middle of the PACE of things we find P E A C E.

It’s true: Work has its own rhythm — a steady pace of 30 minute work session, 60 minutes, 90 minutes.

And then? After the work beats — there are rest beats.  There are Rest Rhythms — islands of 10, 15, 20 minutes — to sit in a hammock, a bit of time suspended in space, close your eyes, listen to the wind make a song of its own through chimes, pen something that speaks the language of your soul, breathe long and deep and be more about being — and less about doing.

I’d tell Mrs. Martin that I am really daily working on these:

5 Secrets to DAILY Master the Art of Rest & Recharge

1. Daily Glory Soak: Sit outside and stare at the sky.

Research indicates that if you make space every day to step into green space you significantly decrease your levels of cortisol — which determines your levels of stress.

So there is this rest rhythm — even 5 minutes in the middle of the day to: Look up into the limbs of a tree and stretch out your own arms and breathe in deep. The Japanese call it “forest bathing.”

But Believers can have a way of life, a way of being in the world, what I call:
“Glory Soaking.”

Daily Glory Soaks cleanse the mind so the heart can fill with thanks.

We humans have tendency to brood, known as “morbid rumination,” which can often makes us fixate and brood on the negative aspects of our lives, which and can lead to worry and angst and dark days — but research has found that when we walked in quiet, wooded areas, we lower the activity in the brooding portion of our brains.

When the heart is full of trouble, step outside to see that the whole earth isn’t full only of trouble, but ultimately is full more of His glory.

“… Nature walkers showed cognitive benefits including an increase in working memory performance, decreased anxiety, rumination, and negative affect, and preservation of positive affect,” is what the research reports.

Adoration of God’s glory short circuits rumination of our problems.

If you want to heal more of the losses in your life, make it your way of life to get outside every day to hear what God means to tell you: “The heavens are telling the glory of God” ( Psalm 19:1 ).

That means?

That means God sings close over us with spread of sky, God stuns and awes with painted sunrises, God unravels stress with His choreographic dance of stars, God enfolds us everywhere in surround sound: “Glory, glory, glory, I am glory and I fill everything with glory so why fill with worry?”

When the heart is full of trouble, step outside to see that the whole earth isn’t full only of trouble, but ultimately is full more of His glory.

2. Daily Gratitude List:

It been a habit of more than a decade for me and it has profoundly transformed my life in every way: Curl up with your journal and write down just three things every day that you’re grateful for you and you increase your happiness by 25% — for free!

Life moves fast, but gratitude & counting gifts catch life & slow it down long enough to taste & savor the joy of it.

You may not see God right in front of you,
but when you write down your thanks for His gifts of grace,
you’re tracing His hand right here.

Life moves fast, but gratitude & counting gifts catch life & slow it down long enough to taste & savor the joy of it.

Life may feel like it’s racing by — but counting gifts is how you glimpse all the good in it.

Counting gifts helps lift….whatever weight you’re carrying.

I keep returning to it, season after season: “Joyfulness is a function of how we see,  and how we see is a function of how we look at everything with gratefulness.” One Thousand Gifts

Take time to give thanks to God — and you give your soul what it wants most: Joy in God.

3. Daily Good Tunes:

I keep finding: Good days need a good playlist.

Music reduces the stress hormone cortisol, strengthens one’s immune system, and decreases one’s sense of pain. Music is free medicine and soundtracks can help keep your soul on track.

Feel the rest between the beats, and your heartbeat gets the rest it needs.

Good tunes, good times.

You are your mental playlists. Good days need a good playlist.

And it turns out? You are your mental playlists.

In a loud world, you need a louder, surer song, the song that sings far beyond the walls of this small world and straight across the expanse of this whole reverberating universe.

What you need to do is turn down the song of inferiority in your head and turn up the song of identity, of who you really are, that’s sung over you, that’s sung because you.

This song is as real as the oxygen filling your lungs right in this moment.

“The Lord your God … is always with you.
He celebrates and sings because of you…” Zephaniah 3:17

The Divine sings the most divine love song because of you, because His heart cannot silently contain His love for you. The God of the heavens is not far off, but here, right here, and the wonder of your presence moves the Maker of the universe to burst into song!

The reality of His soundtrack can literally resonate off the walls of your soul.

So crank the worship, like these tunes and these songs and this soundtrack , and turn up your face, and you turn up your joy!

4. Daily Givenness:

It’s a true thing: Taking the time for intentional acts of givenness, instead of merely the one-off random acts kindness — is how to intentionally let your soul exhale.

The best way to de-stress it to daily bless.

Research indicates that living given makes you happier than getting more.

Intentionally give it forward in one way every day, and you decreases stress and strengthen mental health.

“The best way to de-stress it to daily bless.” The Broken Way

Live given, be the GIFT and give it forward today:

Speak words that make someone stronger, give someone a coffee, choose Fairtrade and live a fair and good story and give someone the gift of empowering hope.

Live given with your life, live given to the wind of His spirit and rest in the music He makes through your life.

5.  Daily God Meditation:

Turns out: A recent study indicates that Bible readers are less stressed than the general population, which is what His Word promises: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you“ (Isaiah 26:3).

It’s only when you make time to encounter God, you make the discovery that you can count on the arms of God carrying you through. God’s Word to you is never a passing word or line — God’s Word is your very lifeline. There is nothing like knowing that the Communicative God wants to communicate with you.

It’s only when you make time to encounter God, that you make the discovery you can count on the arms of God carrying you through.

In tumultuous times, there is only one Voice that can calm seas.

When the sun comes to your window every morning, it comes on fire with a message it can’t contain: The One who is the Word wants to have a word with you.

The One who spoke you into being is a Communicative Being who longs to keep speaking to you.

And in a world that’s hurrying and hurtling, faster and faster, you can reach for your Bible first thing — because when we reach for our first love first, we are assured everything turns out right in the end.

When the world is all stirred up, a soul can be stirred up to meet with God.

Meditate on a verse from His Word all day and you rest in the rest of God.

We are not human doings
working at looking supernatural,
but spiritual beings
doing what is humanly possible
and looking to Christ to do the supernatural.

I’m thinking Mrs. Martin may be one of those who already knew it in her bones:

We are not human doings
working at looking supernatural,
but spiritual beings
doing what is humanly possible
and looking to Christ to do the supernatural.

We are not human doings working to make ourselves spiritually acceptable. We are spiritual beings resting in Christ to do what is humanly impossible.

And the music can come even now, and you can feel the expanse of it right within you, the way twilight seems to exhale at the end of the work: A soul doesn’t work without a Sabbath.

Be still
and know God —
to not forget who you are.

There’s a rhythm that can save your life.

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