Until I broke the silence yesterday, I was in the longest “blogless” stretch since I started blogging consistently in 2015. That January, I joined a 7-day, daily blogging challenge with Seth Godin’s team and I liked it so much, that sort of like Forest Gump, I simply decided to keep going. Since then, I’ve written more than 1000 posts. It hasn’t been easy, of course. It’s been a huge commitment, one that I’ve held myself to pretty intensely. I would blog 5 days a week, no matter what. until this year when I decided to intentionally choose to allow rest into my life as needed.
The last 10 days of silence were glaring evidence of that effort to allow myself to rest.
After our last GNO, we left early Friday morning to head out of town for my niece’s beautiful wedding in Florida. As preparing for travel often is, by the time I felt my back relax into that airplane seat, I knew without a doubt, I needed some rest. That knowing was confirmed by a hilarious “oversleeping” incident on Saturday when the boys had apparently silenced my alarm. Someone was beating on our pitch black hotel room door, fully dressed at 11:00 AM. I pulled the earplugs from my ears and stumbled to the door, eyes half open. Kim was there to let me know that the entire family was worried sick about us, wondering why we were completely unresponsive and late for brunch. She laughed hysterically when she saw my barely-conscious state.
Needless to say, that was the “nail in the coffin”, there would be no early-waking to blog on vacation.
But it was hard. I felt irresponsible. I missed you. Seriously. I think about you reading my blogs while I’m writing them. I think about what encouragement you must need. Then I feel guilty if I don’t write because I worry that you might have needed me to show up that day. But eventually, my rational brain will jump back into the conversation with all my feelings and remind me that if I don’t rest, I will end up quitting altogether. So amid the tension, I rested. Without notice, I took time away. And it was glorious. We talked and laughed and rested and connected like the good old times.
Actually, I took more time away than I intended.
I intended to break the silence on Monday. I got up early, wrote some version of this blog and was ready to publish it when one of the boys came down and we had a little chat before our Monday morning Team HeartStories kick-off call. I saved it as a draft with full intention to pop back in and publish it right after the call, but #summer happened while juggling kids and work. So in this theme of grace and rest, I mentally decided to post it on Tuesday. Then I realized Tuesday was Michelle’s birthday. So I punted it to this morning until . . . I work up this morning and the post was completely gone. POOF! It had disappeared right into thin air.
I got a little frenzied looking for it, until it dawned on me.
We had to do a site reset on Monday night due to ANOTHER glitch with Girls Night Out ticket sales on the site. In the middle of that, it never occurred to me that my post would be deleted. But alas, it was. Pre-time-away, I wouldn’t have re-written this. I would have been so frustrated and exhausted by the whole ordeal, it just would have been lost. But post-vacay Crystal took a deep breath and started over. Clearly, this is the version of this post you must have needed.
Key takeaway?
Get some rest. Take time away. (Even if it’s just 20 minutes in your closet with a book.) Stand up to those feelings of guilt that will inevitably creep up on you. Of course, I’m looking at the girl in the mirror as I say that, but we can do “hard things” like taking time away, and resting in the face of the guilt, together. It sounds silly, but it’s true.
I know I’m not the only one who needs the reminder.
to more love,
Crystal
