Rest When You Need To Rest

Yesterday I found myself beyond the brink of exhaustion. I was shaky, crabby, and really ready to cry at the drop of a hat. I was a mess, plain and simple. I have had too much on my plate lately. I have been going through a great deal of emotional upheaval and it has drained me. I ran 15 miles on Saturday on top of some seriously challenging workouts. Our social schedule has been more packed than usual. I have not been practicing self care. Any one of these could have been compensated for but everything together meant I was heading for a crash. Last night I sat down and cried over something really quite ridiculous. (Um, sorry again precious, wonderful husband). I knew I needed rest so I went to bed early. After all I had to wake up this morning at 4:20am for an 8 mile run.

When the alarm went off this morning I did something I never, ever do. I asked John to turn it off and I turned over and slept for over 2 more hours. It was wonderful. We ended up all snuggling together this morning as a family. The kids joined us and we laughed and warmed up Hannah's cold feet. We had a slow, lazy moring with lots of snuggles and lots of reading. That alone made me feel better.

Workouts are important. Having productive days is a very good thing. Getting together with friends is vital to someone as relationship oriented as me and also to my kids. But sometimes, you just need to rest. You need to step off the crazy train and refresh. You can then look around and figure out how the heck you jumped on that crazy train again to begin with. You can decide the changes that need to happen to stay off it permanently or at least until you unwittingly fall onto it again. We are works in progress, people, works in progress.

There are many things important in this life but we must remember that anyone of them, or several combined, can become too much of a focus and lead us off a balanced path. When our schedule stops nurturing us and our families, we must have the flexibility to make changes, either temporarily or permanently depending on the circumstances.

There are tweaks that need to be made in my life. I know this and I am taking this opportunity to ponder what they need to be. It won't be my running or other workouts, that just happens to be what had to give at the moment. No, I will take some downtime. I will pray and journal. I will discuss it with my best friend John (that, of course, is my amazing husband) and a few select friends. I will make changes to modify and bring my life back into balance.

And all will be wonderful, well until I once again fall out of balance.

Works in progress, people, we must remember we are works in progress.