The Gift Of Rest

   There are different kinds of exhaustion. Mental, physical, spiritual, and Jesus understands them all. He knows how desperately we, as human beings, sometimes need rest. That is why He promises in the Bible, to give rest to those of us who come to Him with our needs.

   A few of my children appear to have been born with extra emotional needs. During all the years of attempting to fill their needs, I discovered that it was not possible to completely achieve this. Only God could finish filling and healing the hollow chasms in these children's emotional makeups.

   Now married, I have also learned something about myself. I too, have excessive emotional needs that can't be solely filled by humans. I suffer from unnecessary feelings of failure, inadequacy, guilt, and of being unlovable. Perhaps people who are deeply sensitive to the needs of others, are prone to being too sensitive to their own frailties as well.

   Through twenty-three years of single motherhood, I gave my entire life to my children, staying happily busy and feeling wonderfully completed. It was a simple mother-state, in which the love, acceptance, attention, and affection I gave my children, was freely and amply returned by them.

   I kept the doors locked, that led to that extra neediness inside me. I had carefully locked them up after the failure of my youthful marriage. But getting married again re-opened those doors. This has proven to be a fearful perception - sometimes terrifying. In my new helpless feeling of being lost, I discovered a sensation of failing. There is an utter vulnerability in opening the innermost parts of one's self to another human who is just that - another human. It was frightening and disappointing to have exposed my needs and discovered that they were too great for another human to fulfill.

   My previous strength faltered, and my usual cheerfulness faded. My confidence that God was helping me do my work well, dissipated with the new work I was now called to do. My new work was to learn to appreciate my husband without needing to be appreciated in return. It quickly became obvious to me that I had much to learn in this area.

   Being miserable is a destructive experience. Yet it is a feeling that is very hard to get rid of. It can be an overpowering emotion. So even though it takes a great deal more effort to be angry, than to be happy, the enemy spends a lot of time reminding us of everything negative. Frowning uses something like 43 muscles, and smiling, only 17 or so. God's way is to help us free our minds, by allowing the negatives to float away. His way is for us to look to Him, for help to remember the positives.

   After several years had passed, and I had accepted the fact that what I needed was greater than my husband could give, I spent much time trying to figure out how to close myself up again, so I could regain my footing. The locked doors were opened, and the new needs, though unwanted, were there. What was I to do?

   Now my eyes of understanding are opened, and I have become aware that my need to constantly receive these things from my husband, is unreasonable. He is dear, and our love sincere. My unmet needs are not his fault. My lonely abyss of twenty-three years as a single mother would be impossible for any man to fill.

   When this dawned on me, I felt lost, and very alone. So I went to Jesus, asking Him to help me learn again to cope, as I had been for all those years. I asked Him to draw near to my husband, and help him to cope with this emotional wife. I asked Him to help my husband to continue loving me while I struggle to climb back into myself, and put these new needs away.

   But I was not able to climb back in. I could not get it locked up again. And as time crawled past, I came to realize, through the teachings of the Holy Spirit, that it was not God's will for me to achieve climbing back into myself. I was praying for the wrong thing. God had created me with these needs. He has been there all along, ready and willing to fill them. In locking them up all these years, they have festered behind their doors, and become deep wounds.

   Only Christ can fill my aching needs. To be very honest, I need to feel loved all the time; interesting, needed and accepted. Not only can He fill these needs, but He WILL. All I need is faith as tiny as a grain of mustard seed. The Bible says so. Now with that growing faith in this new area, I pray for Christ to help me continue to remember to look upward in times of my needs, when no human can fill them. I pray to remember to lean on my Heavenly Father, knowing how much He loves me, and how ready and willing He is, to fill my mind with peace.

   It is not His will for my emotional wounds to overwhelm me; to poison me. It is His will to personally heal them. He is the Holy Physician of my spirit, my soul. It is His desire to fill in the holes, and heal these putrefying sores.

   It has been an amazing and exceedingly difficult process, to learn about my own deep needs; and that no human can satisfy this hunger. No human can love me without condition, without end, never rejecting me. It took years to realize all this, and now more years to accept that not only CAN Jesus give these gifts, but to believe that He WANTS to. I'm so tired. So very weary in the struggle with my irrational feelings of being useless and unwanted. I am aware that they are illogical. But the Bible tells me that Jesus wants to hold my spirit close, comfort me, and give me rest. How do I know this?

   In Matthew 11:28, Jesus offers us a free invitation. Free invitations are given, from goodness and free will. The purpose of a gift is to give pleasure, or another positive thing, to someone. Jesus offers rest here.

    * Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matt. 11:28