Four Ways to Find Rest: What to Do When You’re Always Tired

Hey there. Are you tired? Do you need to know what to do if you're feeling a little bit low on energy? What do you do when you just need to find rest for your body, your mind, and your soul? Well, I want to talk to you about that today. Let's get to it. Hi there. My name is Chrystal Hurst, and I'm so glad that you joined me here. If this is your first time, you need to know that I release a video, let's say every most Sunday nights. It is a video that I share with you from a video that was first done in the Inner Circle. That is a membership for women who want more from me, more from my friends, more intentional growth for living their lives well. We have our time together and then we edit it and put it together for you here. You're watching either on YouTube or Facebook. And if you are, make sure that you're subscribed to the YouTube channel or that you are watching me and following me on Facebook so that you can catch all of the overflow from what's happening in the Inner Circle. If you'd love to join us in there for more, more great content, but also a lot more fun and foolery. Today we've already talked about makeup and skin tights and also new flooring and how you wanna do design when you're not a designer, all the things, all the things. Then join us on the inside. We'd love to see you there. Now I wanted to talk to you today about finding rest, and the reason is because we are embarking upon that time of year when many of us will not feel restful. There are more parties, there are more events, there is more money to spend, there is more to do. And God forbid it's not just you that you have to do this for your children and get gifts for all the teachers and then go to your husband with his party, and then you've got to go to the party for your church and then the party for your job, and then there's a neighborhood situation, and then there's all the family that you have to have in, and then there are the relationships that you need to navigate and the boundaries that you need to set. And then you're trying to stay grateful even though you feel lonely, or you're trying to stay focused even though you're tired and it's the end of the semester. It's the time of the year, y'all, where we just run out of steam. It just is what it is. Right now on the Inner Circle, in the fourth quarter of 2022, we're preparing to navigate the holidays well. Our community courses are geared around navigating the holidays well, dealing with grief, dealing with family members, dealing with keeping your brain on track, um, the 21 Days of Gratitude, because gratitude does make a difference. And then fun, even for us to do. But the reality is, the reason why we need that support, the reason why we need that information, is because the holidays will drain you. Uh, they will, they will. Some of us have mastered it, many of us have not. And we go into this season, some of us can't wait for Christmas. We want to put up our trees on October 1st and sing the carols, and we have already gotten all of our gift and shopping done, you know, by September 29th. It's amazing. You are amazing. But there's some of us who, even if we are early and excited, we still have to buffet our souls for the barrage of stress, chaos, and simply more to do. And I'm currently in the middle of reading a book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. It's a book by John Mark Comer, and it is reminding me of the importance of deciding what I'm going to do, deciding who I'm going to be. We were just talking about this in a sister session. Those are, uh, inner circle, uh, events that we do that stay on the inside. For the most part, they do anyway. And we were talking about this idea of simply needing to decide how we're going to honor our lives in the fourth quarter when there are so many things that are demanded of our lives. Because my head is in this book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and because my head is here every year with how am I going to avoid the tsunami of all the things. I wanted to give you some practical things to do that will help you navigate this season well. They all start with the letter S because I'm a preacher's kid and I believe that alliteration will help you to remember. The first thing is you need to remember the concept of silence. And by silence, I do mean silence. I don't mean quieter or quiet. I mean silence, that you are silent, that your house is silent, that the people in your life are silent, which means you have to do a lot of communication if you live with other people and/or you get out of the house, you go and you spend time by yourself. It is totally possible for you to have your own silent retreat in your bedroom and to tell your people to leave me alone. When the food gets here, when Uber Eats delivers, Y'all can leave it outside the door and knock on the door. Leave me alone for 24 hours. They will not die. Silence is a way for you not just to slow down, for you not just to have space in your life, but for you to hear. There are so many things that I believe God wants to say to us. There are so many things your soul or your body are trying to tell you, and you can't hear them because the world is so loud. And what happens is your body and your brain, your soul and God himself, they stop fighting for your attention. When you teach your body, your brain, your soul that you're not listening, it's like a kid. If they keep trying to get your attention and you constantly shh them away, after a while they stop coming, or they don't, they, they don't come as often, or they don't come as boldly because they don't want to be shh away. And so in order to retrain that child that you are listening, you have to make the intent to create space so that they know, oh, you do want to hear from me. You are interested in what I have to say. This is what happens with your brain, your body, and your soul. Silence gives your brain, body, and soul room to speak, encouragement to speak. You are retraining them that you actually will listen and can hear. Silence creates space in your mind. It creates space for you to get ideas that you wouldn't normally get. Listen, I get my best ideas in the shower. It's like proven. And I usually stumble out trying, you know, my goodness, to not forget. I repeat them over and over again because I had— I solved all the world's problems in the shower. At one point I even had something called Aqua Notes. It was on a Christmas Collection episode that we did way back when. And Aqua Notes are a suction pad with waterproof paper and a waterproof pencil. So you won't forget the things that you have that happen in the shower. And then I realized it's not just me. When we silence ourselves, the brain has room to do its job. You need to look at your calendar and decide when you're going to be quiet. You may not be able to have a whole day, but one of the beautiful things that I do on a regular basis is sit in my car. I'll bring the kids home, they go on the inside, I give them instructions, I wind the window down, I turn off the car, and I sit there. Sometimes I'm on social media, sometimes I'm just sitting there, just sitting. Sometimes I'm reading, sometimes I'm just sitting. Magical things happen in the car when I'm quiet. Magical things happen in the shower. Magical things happen for my sister Priscilla when she goes on a morning walk. No headphones, no phone calls, no Spotify or Apple Music. Silence. The gift that you give yourself when you're silent is the gift of letting your mind, your heart, your body, your brain, your soul know that they are welcome. This is your way to enter a place of health. Because what if your body is trying to tell you something and you can't hear it? Did you know that one of the sources of anxiety— we are chemical beings, and so, so many of the things that happen in our bodies are due to chemistry being off. This is why even as a person of faith, you shouldn't be ashamed or hesitant to take medicine that helps you regulate your hormones or your chemistry. If you are depressed, because listen, you are a chemical being, and sometimes the resetting of those chemicals help you. Sometimes the resetting of those chemicals happens when you do natural things, like you go for a walk or a run, or you exercise, and those hormones make you feel good about your life. But anxiety is your body often trying to communicate something to you, and anxiety builds up when you don't listen. Your body's like, I'm trying to tell you This person isn't good for you. This is why you always feel anxious when you're having a conversation with them. I'm trying to tell you you're overcommitted, which is why every time someone asks you to do something, you feel anxious because you don't want to say no. You don't know how to say no, but the reality is you need to because you're overcommitted. Anxiety is your body chemistry trying to tell you something, but I can guarantee you, if you're feeling anxious about it, unless it's repressed and you need therapy or counseling to bring it out. That if anxiety is mounting in your life, your body, your brain has probably tried to tell you something you've ignored or you've justified or you've left alone. Silence will give your brain, your body, your soul the gift of speaking. The other thing is solitude. Now, in solitude, you might be silent, but you might not be. You can be alone and have noise. Solitude, being by yourself, what that does, it silences everybody else so that you can hear yourself. So it doesn't mean silence. You can go to the movies, you know. It means that you have the opportunity to know what you want. What do I want when no one else is in the room? What do I want when I don't have to worry about other people? How do I like it? Which way do I want to do it? Where do I want to go in the mall if I go by myself? I have a friend right now, her name is Gail. She is event extraordinaire at our church. I saw her at the fair last week when I went with Charis and the kids. She was sitting by herself. I said, are you here by yourself? She said, every year, every year I buy myself a season pass and I come to the fair at least 3 times each week and I sit here and I watch people. It's the thing that I do for myself. Solitude, it enables you to become good friends with you. When you don't have to worry about muzzling other people, it teaches you about you. I went to Hawaii in March of this year by myself. It was combined with a business trip, kind of had to justify it in my head, but I did go by myself. It was the most lovely thing. To get to Hawaii, I went to Honolulu to rent a car. The place where I was going was 90 minutes away from the airport. I drove myself from the airport to the hotel, and along the way stopped where I wanted to, and I didn't have to deal with someone saying, I gotta go to the bathroom, or are you stopping again? Are you taking another picture? Do you want to eat there? I don't know about that place. Yes, I want to eat there. You want to go into that little roadside store? It looks kind of sketchy. Sure, I want to try it. It enabled me to be friends with me this season. Consider silence. Making pockets of it available. You may not be able to take a whole day or weekend, but certainly an evening or an early morning solitude. Decide what you want to do October, November, December of this year, anytime if you're watching this video after that. What do you want to do? And just do it. Don't find a friend. Don't try to put a date on a calendar with you and your sister. Just do what you want to do. Aloneness will teach you who you are when you're free. Free to be you, free to not have to think about anyone else. Solitude allows you to know in its purest form who God made you. I love being with people, I love it, but solitude has been a gift because it also allowed me to learn how much I like being with me. So if I have to choose between doing everything in my— by my— like, I know true introverts. Like, my husband is a true introvert. I know what true introverting looks like. Not only do they want to be alone, they need to be alone, and they actually prefer to be alone. I prefer to be with people. Um, I don't get energy from being with people. I'm more of an ambivert, but I prefer people, community, fun, laughter, that I just want to be by myself all the time. The gift in being by myself though sometimes is that I get really clear on who I am and what I want. Silence allows me to hear myself. Solitude allows me to see myself. Henry David Thoreau said, I'm going into the woods, dot, dot, dot, to see if when basically the world is quiet, if I might know what it is to live. What if you're not living because you don't even know what you truly want? What if you don't enjoy the holidays because you've never actually thought about what you want out of the holidays? You can create time and space to be by yourself for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. It doesn't have to be a whole weekend retreat. Listen, I have friends who are doing the most. They are going to little tiny homes and renting them out for the weekend to be by themselves or to finish their books. I think it's awesome, but you don't have to do all that. You can, but you don't have to. Sit in your car, go for a walk, be alone, take the long shower, be quiet, tell the people that you love that you're not coming. Silence and solitude. Another one is Sabbath. So the Sunday situation. Remember when everything used to be closed? All the stores were closed, so you were forced to do nothing. Now everything's open and you were forced to do everything. Remember when there was no such thing as sports on Sunday for your kids? All the games happened on Saturday and you were not competing with anything on a Sunday morning. Now everything's non-stop all the time. There is no break. Our phones are with us all the time. And trust me, I, like anybody else, am going to freak out if I don't know where my phone was. Oh my gosh, where's my phone? Where's my phone? My life is in this phone. I get it. But what if you don't realize the pull that your life has on you because you don't actually practice rest? You don't know what it is to be restful, for your mind to be calm, You don't know what it is to set aside time to be with your family uninterrupted. You don't know what it is to have a leisurely day to sit on your front porch or to clean out your kitchen because you have time now to make sure that all the Tupperware bowls have a lid because there's nothing else competing for your time. You don't know what it is to just sit and enjoy the presence of God and enjoying the reality that he lives in your soul because you don't make it happen. God did not give us Sabbath just for him. He gave it to us for us. We weren't designed to run without recharging. Sabbath is your opportunity to recharge whenever you do it, whether you do it on a Saturday or Friday or Sunday. There's a friend that I have that every Sunday takes a nap, and I know it. And so as I was listening to this podcast, she says people would freak out initially until they realized, oh, this is what we do. And they would know if they call me between 1 and 4, they weren't going to reach me, even if they call my landline. Because I was taking a nap. They stopped freaking out that I wasn't answering my phone. She must be taking a nap. You can teach people how to treat you. You can teach yourself how to take a break. This break does involve rest and sleep. Ruth Jo Simons, um, a good friend of mine, she's been on the podcast, been in the Inner Circle, done some sister sessions, taught at events. I heard her say once, Rest is worship. Because when you rest, what you're ultimately saying to your Creator is, I can cease striving because you are working when I'm not. I can do my part and trust you to do yours. I can cease striving because I know that even though I want to put forth my best effort, sometimes my best effort is simply letting you handle it. It is trusting God to handle things and offering your rest entrust to God. Priscilla, my sister, has a book on Sabbath. I've also mentioned that resource, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Uh, there's another book, Quiet My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. I'll put all of these, link them in the bottom. There are so many books that talk about slowing down. You want to know why? Because we're not good at it, because the world doesn't want to allow it. Because you at every turn are a piece of data that companies pay lots of money for to be noise in your eyes and in your ears, to advertise and tell you all the things that you're supposed to buy. The system is rigged. The television shows, the commercials, they are rigged for your addiction and your inability to disconnect. So Sabbath is your way of waging war on the war that's already been waged on you. For you to say, I am more than someone to advertise to. I am more than someone to be addicted to this TV show. I am more than the person who needs to be addicted to spending money as I walk the mall on a Sunday afternoon with money I don't have. My mother used to go to the mall every Sunday when my daughter was younger. She would put her in a stroller. That girl was in the stroller till she was at least 6. I'd be like, Mom, get her out of the stroller! And she was like, but this is the way we easily get around the mall. She wouldn't spend money. My dad would come home from his Sunday, she'd make him a ham sandwich, and then she would take Charis and they'd go to the mall just so she could walk around and enjoy her Sabbath afternoon while my dad took his nap. Sabbath, you put a line in the sand and you say, all the things I normally do, I'm not doing them. And you will see how addicted you are to work, how addicted you are to your phone, how addicted you are to people, how addicted you are to doing, to going, and realize how difficult it might be to be still. But when you create Sabbath, that also creates the container for you to practice solitude, if you like, and silence. Sabbath is the container for things that bring you rest. So here's the deal. You have to create space in your life for these things. And the only way that you're going to create space for rest, space for Sabbath, space for silence, space for solitude, either them separately or all together— maybe you get your silence and your solitude and your Sabbath rest in your space that you carve out on Sunday. But the way to do it is to carve it out. You have to put it on your calendar. You have to decide, this is the rhythm that I'm going to commit to. Rest is not laziness. Rest does not say, I'm not gonna do what needs to be done because I don't feel like it. Rest is a decision. It's a decision that's made in advance about what I'm gonna place in my life so that life does not wear me out. You wanna make sure you're stewarding your time well. You wanna make sure that you're working hard when you're not resting. You wanna make sure that you're honoring God with the gifts that he's given you, that you're honoring your boss at work, that you're managing your time well. There are seasons, listen, when the land would need to rest. If you're a farmer or if you know about land, there would be years when they would say, "Leave the land alone, it needs to rest." If you want it to be productive, you've got to give it a break. If you want to be productive in life, if you want to produce good fruit, if you want to go far, if you want to do exactly what God wants you to do, you got to have silence so you can hear him. You have to have solitude so you understand how you want to operate in those spaces You need Sabbath because you've got to have a reset for every week that you need in your life so that you're able to come back to the things you're called to do with renewed vigor and energy. And then you've got to create the space on your calendar to do all of these things. It's not about not working. It's not about living a leisurely lifestyle. While there's nothing wrong with that if you can pay your bills, what is wrong is when you're leisure for leisure's sake and agnostic to what productivity God would want you to have. The problem comes in is when you're productive for productivity's sake and you are totally unaware of what God wants you to do because you can't hear him in all the noise of your productivity. It's about being balanced, knowing when it's time for the land to lie rest, because in order for you to produce more, you need to take a break. The whole point of all of this is so that you can hear so that you can see and so that you can do, that you have a clear calling and vision. And you can't get that, you can't get it when you're on the run, on the go, when the world's too noisy, whether it's TV or if it's your kids running around the house or it's work. You have to carve out the space to hear, be still, and know. Listen, I have a dishwasher that, um, it works just fine. My kids cannot use it. I want them to wash the dishes before they put it in the dishwasher because that way we don't have to discuss whether or not the dishwasher is broken or not. We can just simply say, you washed them or not. I put them in the dishwasher because I don't want the dishes on my counter. So my dishwasher is basically an oversized dish rack, and then we let it drip dry. I do that every day until until we wash the dishes in the dishwasher once a week. Why do I wash the dishes in the dishwasher once a week? Because if the standing water sits there, after a while it stinks. So I do hit the reset button on my dishwasher after I've been doing the same thing every day because I don't want it to get stagnant and start to smell. Every week you have things to do, and every week you have things that you're probably sitting on the shelf and thinking, I'll get around to that, or I'm going to do that, or I'm going to prioritize that. Once a week, you've got to just stop and run the cycle and say, is this really clean? Is this really producing what it's supposed to produce? Is what I've been doing during the week, is it accomplishing what I want it to accomplish? You have to stop and just let your life cycle so that you can take a look at your life and really identify if things are going well. If you don't hit the restart button, you'll be toxic. Toxic means you are not a good environment for things to grow. You cannot be toxic and expect to reach your highest heights. You cannot be toxic and expect to go the farthest distance. And I know toxic can mean a lot of things. It can mean trauma, it can be narcissism. I'm talking about the toxicity toxicity that will happen in your brain, your body, and your soul when you can't hear God speak, when you can't hear and know what you want, when you are tired to the bone. I am talking about the toxicity where even your dreams won't become a reality because you're toxic. You haven't taken a moment to clean yourself out. Good things don't grow in toxic environments. So how can you not be tired? How can you not be low on energy? How can you be more productive? You need to find time to be silent so you can hear. Find time to be in solitude so you can see and feel. Find time to Sabbath on a regular basis. Make it a part of your week. And then you got to create the space by putting this on the calendar. Again, I create this content inside of the Inner Circle, and we create the content like this but deeper, where we have community courses and where we have, um, journeys and content to help everyone not just hear it and be encouraged and motivated, but how do you do it? Here's the PDF, here's the download, here's someone else saying it a different way, here's accountability and community, here's a check-in circle, here are all these things we want to do to help support support you in doing what you heard, because it's not about hearing, it's about doing. This is why we have a planner coming out soon. Hopefully by the time this airs, I'll be able to show it to you. People used to say, that's Chrystal Hurst, how do you do this? How do you do that? How do you do this? And I have a little black book, and I would draw lines in it and make something that worked for my brain. And now there's a planner, because if you don't put the important things down on your calendar, they will not happen. Trust me, other people in your life have plans for you. Your children have plans for you. Your boss has plans for you. Your spouse has plans for you. The enemy has plans for you to get distracted, to not keep with the main thing. So don't be distracted. Decide when you're going to put these principles to work, because space, silence, solitude, and Sabbath rest are your keys to operating out of fullness and not exhaustion. It is the key to you operating out of overflow instead of out of contraction. It is the key for you knowing exactly what God wants of you because you can hear, and not fumbling in confusion because you're figuring it out unnecessarily on your own. I want you to be still. I want you to know how not to hurry. So here's to getting back to some basics. Here's to learning how to be still. Why? Because when you give yourself the gift of these things— space, creating space for solitude, silence, and Sabbath rest. It will change the terrain of your mind and your heart. And here's the thing I've heard time and time again from many a person: it also changes the terrain of their body. What if your body is going haywire and it just needs you to take a break? You can And I know you will. I'd love for you to tell me down below in the comments which one of these struck you the most. Is it a Sabbath, one day a week? Is it silence, being quiet or having quiet around you? Is it solitude? You don't know how in the world you're going to be by yourself. Is it space? You don't know where this can fit on your calendar. I'm going to tell you what a wise woman once told me. Chrystal Hurst, trust me. You want to add in space in your life for stillness and quiet, because if you don't do it, eventually your body or your brain will demand it from you, and it won't pick a good time to require you to stop. There's too many of us having breakdowns, y'all. Too many of us having heart attacks. Too many of us stressing out. Too many of us quitting our job because we can't take anymore. Too many of us leaving our marriages simply because it got hard and we couldn't figure out who we were. Some of these things, not all, but some of these things, some of these things are simply because you haven't been obedient. Jesus said, come with me and I will give you an easy yoke. There will be a yoke, there will be work to do, you will need to plow, but the yoke, the thing that you have to carry, will be easy. But you gotta do it my way. And Jesus went away a lot. I know that sometimes when people start talking about having space and solitude and silence and Sabbath, It sounds like an idea that may be difficult to implement, but I just want to tell you, we all have 24 hours in the day. So if you look at someone else's life and you think, well, I can't do that, maybe you can, but maybe you just have to get more creative with how you do it. Within your 24 hours, you can create space, get up a little earlier, put your kids to bed earlier. Instead of having all of the noise in the car with the radio, maybe you operate in silence on your way to work or on your way to run errands. Look for ways inside of your day to create the space you need to be the best you. If there are people all over the world who can figure that out and we're all working with 24, you can too. So as you watch this video, don't allow yourself to tell you you can't make it happen. One, you're too precious not to put forth the effort. And two, it's totally possible. We're all working with the same 24, and we just have to work within our individual constraints to find a few minutes to be committed to ourselves. You only get this one life. I want you to use it well, and I want you to know what you're supposed to be doing with your time, who you are, and what God wants and requires of you. The only way to do that is if you have room to receive the information. And I'm here not only cheering for you, but believing in you that you can. Here's to 24 and using yours well. Now there is one thing that I can do that might help you to look at your time. It's a free download, a free downloadable PDF. It's called Manage Your Minutes. It's where I've just taken a page, listed out all the time in the day so that you can look at your day and look at how you're spending your time. Your time is just like money. If you don't budget it, you'll use it. You might even squander it. So why don't you take a look at how you're spending your time and look for ways that you can substitute some of the things I've talked about today, space, silence, solitude, and Sabbath rest into your time so you use your time well. I hope that's helpful to you. In addition to the content of this video, be sure to make sure you're subscribed and that you're following me and make sure you have notifications turned on so that anytime I go live, you'll be sure to know and enjoy that PDF. Use your time well, okay? You only have this one life, and I want you to live it well.