Rest

Linking up today (a few days late!) with Lisa Jo at Five Minute Friday. Today's word prompt is Rest.

This word prompt is especially appropriate as I'm just coming off a week of rest. We had the blessing of going to Grand Cayman on a business trip and extended our stay for a few days. It was a week of no Facebook or blog reading, checking e-mail briefly perhaps only three times (and only in response to a request from family), very little tv watching. The biggest decisions each day were beach or pool and where/when to eat.

The rest was a good thing, a blessed thing, a necessary thing. Rest can't always look like a week in the Carribean (oh, that it could!), but it's necessary and restorative. (Even as I type those words I think about those who don't get a break to rest, who work every day to haul water to their families, who sacrifice and scrimp and take as many hours of overtime at work as they can to meet the basic needs of their families. Perspective.)

Now we're back and even as the plane landed to another gloomy day with cold temperatures and snow on the ground, I found the realities of everyday life seeping right back into my marrow. (My first stop, after all, was the grocery store.) Those realities and demands felt almost toxic after an extended period of rest, and I realized that I must be intentional about rest - physical rest, rest from connectivity, rest from all that is not good for my soul.