What is Your Why: In Rest

Rest. This is your portion. As we’ve been talking about this whole series, it’s your care recipient’s whole life, and even if this is just a season of your life, it is still part of your life, which means we must find ways to make caregiving sustainable physically, mentally, and emotionally. The Lord’s heart is that we would work from a place of rest, rather than working for rest. Having supervised a group home for a few years, I know that this can be extremely difficult, especially when you do not have the help you need to take care of your care recipient(s). I believe that even in crazy running seasons, the Lord still has so much true rest to offer us. In the exhaustion, Jesus wants to care for you, he wants to strengthen you and encourage you.

As we talk about rest, while I am very pro bubble baths, that’s not necessarily the rest I want to talk about today. I want to talk about all the rest things that are restorative and supportive to the rest of your life. I think it is so easy to get sucked into a good TV show – and while there is a time and place for enjoying some TV, when we are on the verge of burning out and utterly exhausted from providing care, I believe there are better ways to rest that support your restoration. I know it can be so hard to hear and to follow through with reducing the mindless rest that doesn’t actually restore our souls and replenish us for what lies ahead. But it is so worth it to do the things we need to do to feel our best. That is after all how we can be the best for our care recipients. <3

I want to encourage you with a few of my experiences. First, squeeze in time to read your Bible and pray. On days when I would get done working at 10 pm and start working again at 6 am, I would get better quality sleep and feel so much better at 6 am when I started working again if I spent even fifteen minutes in prayer and reading my Bible before bed. I know it sounds so hard, and if that feels like too big of a step, I want to encourage you that even listening to the Bible (maybe while you’re soaking in the tub), or praying for two minutes as you brush your teeth is a great place to start and is such a great option for bringing rest and peace to your soul.

Second, workout. I have found working out to be so important for me to feel properly rested. Caregiving can be physically exhausting. Transferring and repositioning our care recipients is enough on its own and then there’s the extra stress that comes from providing cares (like getting our care recipient(s) dressed in bed, changing briefs/diapers many times a day for years and years), and all the awkward bending and lifting that comes along with the role. While we get a lot of physical activity being caregivers, I believe it is so important to focus on a good workout (and stretch session!), to support our bodies in the work that we do. When I was able to squeeze in workouts to my routine, even if it was just a quick 20 minutes, my body felt so much better when I would be done providing care for the day. I wasn’t as physically exhausted and the aches and pains that come with caregiving were so much less. If just my experience wasn’t enough, I’ve been learning in OT school the importance of working out when you have a physically demanding job because when you’re doing the repetitive tasks over and over again, you’re strengthening the same muscles over and over again and it is so important to make sure you are strengthening all of your muscles (imbalances lead to injuries – and we don’t have time for that).

Third and final tip of the day, gratitude. I encourage you to write down (in a journal, on the notes app on your phone, in a text message to another caregiver friend) three positives from your day. Research has shown over and over again that having a positive mindset and finding things to be grateful for improves our mood, reduces stress, reduces PTSD symptoms, improves sleep and so on. Thinking about three things to be grateful for on a given day will take a just a minute or two of your time but can have a drastic impact on your entire day and can slowly help you to see things in a more positive way and decrease your stress. I really want to encourage you to choose a buddy (friend, spouse, your care recipient, whoever), to start texting three things you are grateful for each day.         

Last week as I shared about the value of choosing extravagance in caregiving and I talked about a week where I worked almost 90 hours of direct patient care. I believe that those types of weeks should be anomalies, but with the tremendous difficulties we are facing right now when it comes to hiring great caregivers, most caregivers are working far beyond what they should be, and many families are unable to find the support staff for their loved one(s), that would help the care recipient(s) and the primary caregivers so much. In these seasons where overworked and exhaustion are the norm, I want to encourage you to put on your schedule each week a time of prayer/worship/meditation and exercise time (even if it looks like stretching for 10 minutes before bed). The baby steps that we can squeeze in today will make differences that will compound overtime to make the caregiving days more do-able.

My prayer for you is that you would find ways to incorporate deep rest into your daily routines. I pray that all the caregivers would have hearts to discern which things provide the deep rest that brings physical, mental, and emotional rest and peace. Lord, I thank you that as the weary caregivers come to you and lock eyes with you, that your promise is to provide them with rest (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.).

Jesus, we love you.

Amen.

You are so loved, sweet caregiver. Have a great weekend, get some quality rest and we’ll see you back here next Friday for another post.

Blessings,

Rebecca <3