Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing at all.
The past few months have felt like a blurry nightmare I can’t seem to wake up from. So much has changed, and while I’ve always found change challenging, this season has felt like my world was turned upside down.
There was a move, a tough diagnosis for my cat, and a relentless pain I couldn’t escape. 5 doctors, 3 MRI’s, 2 ultrasounds, and several misdiagnoses later, I finally learned the cause. It’s been over 3 months since I’ve run a single step, and 3 weeks since I’ve done any physical activity. God, do I miss it.
I’m still navigating a lot of pain, which keeps me accountable to rest, but it’s even harder to battle the anxiety that I may never fully heal. I’ve spent years conditioning my mind and body to move, to push, to achieve. I’m so used to equating effort with progress, but with tissue healing, effort looks different.
Right now, rest is training. My body is still working- my cells are literally rebuilding tissue- and that process can’t happen efficiently if I’m expending energy elsewhere. This is a different kind of training block- one centered on regeneration rather than performance. Every time I choose rest over re-aggravation, my body gets the chance to put itself back together.
My guilt comes from the same wiring that helped me reach new heights- the instinct to push, to do, to prove. I’ve built so much purpose around movement that stillness feels like I’m losing a piece of myself. But I’m learning that healing asks for a different kind of discipline- restraint, trust, allowing. I’m being asked to expand my definition of strength to include patience, surrender, and faith. The courage to slow down when every part of you wants to run.
I keep coming back to the notion that in life, the only thing we can truly control is our response. We can still find meaning in our suffering. When we can’t change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Rest isn’t giving up- it’s beginning again, quietly, patiently, from the inside out. Because even in stillness, something sacred is rebuilding. And that too, is strength.