Finding Grace Through Rest

As I’ve mentioned before in other posts, there are several blogs I’ve been following regularly, that I receive in my email inbox every day (as I hope you receive High Road Artist). This lovely piece is from Jen Lee and her Life Unfolds Blog (lifeunfoldsblog.com) which I think you would enjoy too. You should check her out. But in the meantime, here is a post by Jen Lee that I think is pretty timely as we move into this busy holiday season. Enjoy.

You tell yourself one hundred times a day
and you tell yourself still:
It’s okay.
It’s okay to try a new idea, even if it makes you squirm
like a too-tight sweater with too-short sleeves
trapping your shoulders.
It’s okay to try another one.
The pillows supporting your back tell you it’s okay
to spend two days a month on the sofa.
Its soft red curves remind you the world has this way
of moving itself along without your toil.
Your children can fend for themselves at dinnertime.
Their animated voices, enlivened by freedom,
remind you it’s okay to let them find their own way
sometimes.

It’s okay to let the sink fill with pots
and the kitchen trash stand guard one more day.
This is not impending disaster and doom,
there is no cartoon snowball growing ominous
and gaining velocity down some imaginary mountain.
This is rest. This is ease. Maybe even grace.
To let go, to close your eyelids, to wait until
your strength returns to make the trek out to Canarsie.
The calendar whispers that there are other days,
other times that will be happy homes for the tasks
on your list. And some of them are better left undone,
just so you remember you are not holding this great world
together, spinning it with your tenacity and will.
It’s okay to let yourself be held, be carried a little more often
by divine winds and invisible help.
To be the recipient in equal measure as the source.

Love to you all,

Jeane