I’ve been waiting seven years to find a beach-style lounge chair for under $35.
Thanks to Target, I now have one.
It’s a jelly chair. Plastic, grey, white. It clicks in place, goes up and down at different levels, and allows me to lean back just so when I read, so that my eyes see high pines just past the chapter I’m reading.
I began begging for one of these chairs when I was pregnant with my second blond. Budgets told me I had to hold off until I found the right price. It took me a while, but here I am now – lounged and happy.
With all that life has entailed lately, and all the new responsibilities that are on the horizon, I’ve become keenly aware of a human’s need to have a halt and a hush every now and again.
As I shared in my last post, I often times succumb to the idea that lounging is for lazies. While not ever really coining it out loud or outrightly, I’ve always thought that rest was for the week.
That is, until I started homeschooling three young children, in a very small house, on a limited budget, through job transitions, while dealing with health concerns, with no extra help to call upon. That will change your stance on things a bit.
I still tend to think that naps are a nuisance, and that they waste valuable daylight, but I’m loosening a bit as I realize that rest isn’t for the weak – it’s for the weary who are waring out life vigorously everyday.
If you need rest, it could just mean that you’re a live wire doing life to the fullest.
But pride jabs this logical kind of thinking square in the face. Pride tells type A’s that idlers are the only ones who need a recess.
When pride says this, it should punched.
All of us come to the end of ourselves at some point. And this is where we should give in to the urge to roll over into rest for a while. It’s also where we should give ourselves up to the only One who can really fill us again.
Psalm 23 calmly mentions that…
He makes me like down in green pastures / He leads me beside still waters / He restores my soul
We should position ourselves in such a way sometimes, that allows the Lord to break through.
This three-way folding chair is part of my plan to be more purposed about pausing.
Do what you have to do. Situate a reading nook, write rest into your calendar, calculate the budget for cheap getaways, wander around on a walk, find solitude, find fellowship, buy a Target lawn chair – whatever flips your bill and floats your boat and makes you brim again.
Even those of us who scoff at standstills need interludes.
At some point today, after the the A.M. rains clear, and the blue returns to our region, I’ll be making it a point to plop myself down onto that cheap plastic and take words in. I’ll pray while I’m there, too.
And the reprieve, no matter how short, will surge my energies again.
