Sleep. The most talked about baby subject. There are the most books, the most resources, and the most conversations all surrounding your baby’s sleep. The first question that other parents often ask me is, how is she sleeping?

What makes something so basic, like sleep, so complicated?

Sleep. Let’s think about this critically for just a moment.
God created us to need sleep,
therefore God created us with limits,
which means God created us to rest.

 

F I G H T I N G . R E S T.

About a month ago, we were knee-deep into the 4-month sleep regression with Lydia when we realized that our lives just hit a major transition. She went from being a newborn who could sleep whenever and wherever, to a baby who fights sleep.

After several nights in a row of her turning to a different baby at about the seven o’clock hour – from her smiley, giggling self to complete melt down – we realized that nothing was wrong other than she was simply tired. But she wouldn’t just go to sleep like she had in the past. We had to spend a significant amount of time soothing her and helping her fall asleep.

Out of that season has come an established a sleep time routine for 2-3 naps a day and a bedtime at 7pm. We put her in her sleep sack, turn on the sound machine, rock her, and hum How Great the Father’s Love for Us. Within moments she calms down and often I will hear a soft sigh of giving up and see her eyes roll back and her heavy lids start to close. I keep rocking her until her eyes are closed and then set her down in her crib to rest.

Lydia needs my help going to sleep. As we approach the six-month mark, when babies are considered old enough to self-sooth, we will embark on this idea of “sleep training” which can take on various forms. I find it so interesting that something so simple, something so basic, we need to be trained in and assisted with, but I’m sure more to come on this in future writings.

But for now, I’ll do what I always do with this blog. Take the normal circumstances of everyday motherhood and let God reveal Himself to me and teach me through them.

 

C R E A T E D . F O R . R E S T.

If you are familiar with the creation story in Genesis, God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, He rested from His work (Genesis 2:2).

When God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, He declared that one day a week should be held as the Sabbath. This day should be kept as a holy day of rest and Israel should remember when the Lord brought them out of slavery and set them free (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).

God created us to rest.

While I don’t know all the answers, I believe that one of the reasons God created us with limits is to remind us that we are dependent on God for all our needs. Just like He called Israel to rest for the sake of remembering, our rest should remind us that we cannot depend on ourselves, but on God alone.

He created us to need Him, therefore He created us to rest.

 

C H O O S I N G . R E S T .

So what does rest, as an adult, look like? Yes, it is sleep in a sense, but I think at a certain age, it becomes more.

Cycles of rest should be a regular part of our day, our week, and our year. It can be as simple as returning to the Lord in the morning for prayer before we start our day, attending church on Sundays and having a day devoted to not working, or taking vacations or retreats a few times a year for rest. It should be a time when we get rid of expectations and commitments and turn our eyes on the Lord. To do the things that stir our affections for Him, whether that be a community, a hobby, or silence. We must prioritize rest. We must figure out what rest looks like for us and practice it, or we will risk burnout, exhaustion, or worse.

I am a lot like Lydia. I fight rest. As an achiever, I am always thinking of the next thing that needs to get done, the next person I need to see, and what’s coming the next day. I need God’s help to remind myself to stop. To hide my phone in the other room. To sip my coffee slow and appreciate the little moments of each day. To set appropriate boundaries and block off whole days or evenings to spend time with family and without the expectation of feeling the need to get anything done.

And I know that this is not uniquely me. In my community group last week, we talked about the idea of rest, and every person in the room admitted… we don’t know how to rest. We don’t know what it looks like to “honor the Sabbath” in our twenty-first century, American lives with smart phones and deadlines and constant demands surrounding us.

Somehow we fight
the very thing
we were created for.

Just because God created us for something, doesn’t make it easy. He created us to follow Him and be in a relationship with Him, yet we all know that following Him in the midst of the world’s temptations isn’t a walk in the park. Just like Lydia needs my help with her sleep, God wants us to ask Him for His help. He wants to help us follow Him. He wants to help us rest and be our rest. He wants us, through Him alone, to experience freedom.

When we choose to do what God ultimately created us to do, we feel peace, we feel fulfillment, and we feel freedom.

So by choosing rest, you’re choosing obedience.
By choosing rest, you’re choosing Jesus.
By choosing rest, you’re choosing freedom, rest assured.

 

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)