Five Minute Friday: An abundance of rest and restoration
Walking by our local brook, including this view, brings me joy and restoration.
Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday, restore, resonates with me strongly. As regular readers here will know, #MyOneWord this year is replenish. A time for filling up the stores that have been depleted from writing two books, completing an MA in Christian spirituality, and facing some other challenges. Yet as I talked with my weekly writing buddies yesterday, they reminded me (lovingly) that I have more replenishing to embrace. That although we’re halfway through 2018, I’m still doing a whole lot with my “regular” writing/speaking load. And that when 2018 ends, I won’t magically have reached a place of restoration. I’m a work in progress, and can look forward to the gift of filling up beyond this calendar year.
To cite one area of specificity, I’m realizing that replenishing has meant we’ve enacted a more limited approach to hospitality this year than previously. We love having visitors from foreign climes, but with my energy stores it’s just felt too much. Acknowledging that this is a season and that I’m not a failure because of needing boundaries is a good thing, although hard at times too.
How do you embrace the need to replenish and restore?
You can read another of my #fiveminutefriday articles on the theme of replenish here. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here. It’s a wonderful community!
Hello! 
It’s crazy to think we’re half way through the year already! I’m grateful the act of restoring and replenishing is an on-going process. Summertime actually doesn’t offer as much natural rest for me as it does for others, as I have two school-aged kids and a baby plus a husband (teacher) all home during the summer. I have to work hard to be intentional about it. Thanks for your thoughts, it’s nice to “meet” you through Five Minute Friday! 🙂
I sometimes long for the long summers I enjoyed in the States growing up for my kids here in the UK, and then I (selfishly?) give thanks that I can, like today, decide to do my work out in the sunshine, with kids in school until the 3rd week of July. I’m glad you’re able to be intentional. Good to meet you too!
i LOVE your word! LOVE IT!!!! I am a nut for WOY and don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone choose that one. It is powerful!
Isn’t WOY so fabulous! What’s your word this year?
Setting boundaries, on others as well as on one’s own aspirations, is vital!
I don’t really replenish any more. Pancreatic cancer’s just a fight to the death, and I’m aiming that it won’t be MY death, but ‘his’,
After that, it’ll be time for a Foster’s or ten.
#1 at FMF this week.
https://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2018/06/your-dying-spouse-485-healed-heart-fmf.html
Bless you, Andrew. I’m so glad you keep showing up.
Very true! I guess many Christians struggle with setting boundaries, saying no to them is like denying their faith and its values. But we do need rest and replenishing before we can give again. And that might mean retreating and saying no for a while. Only then are we able to say fully yes to the right things.
I hope you experience many fruitful moments of rest and restoration as you’re brave to set the right boundaries!
Well, I hope I’m setting the right boundaries – it’s a continual struggle, isn’t it. And I find myself wondering why I suggest certain things or agree to do others, and realize I’ve overcommitted and it’s back to the drawing board. More fodder for learning! Thanks for popping over.
It can be so hard to set limits. I know that I do better when I have regular down time to restore and replenish myself, but I often feel guilty that I don’t do more. Thanks for the important remind to embrace seasons of replenishment.
Thanks for visiting! I hope you can eschew the guilt and protect your time of replenishment. It’s a lesson I’m embracing too.