What It Means to Rest as a Special Needs Mom - Part 1

Choosing self-care means overcoming some limiting beliefs such as we aren’t worth it or that we can’t leave things undone to take the time to rest. In today’s episode, Amy, Sara, and Carrie discuss how self-care is a form of worship, how Jesus taught us to take time away, and learning to rest in the present moment. Don’t miss it.

March 23, 2021

Timestamps & Key Topics:

• 0:19-     Intro
• 1:10-     Leaving Things Undone
• 3:14-     Letting Go of Pride 
• 8:07-     Self-Care as Worship
• 11:12-   Limiting Beliefs
• 17:39-  Choosing Rest
• 25:48-  Practice the Present Moment
• 28:09-  Closing

Episode Links & Resources

• Seven Steps to Help you Breathe by Amy J. Brown
• Choosing Rest by Sally Breedlove
• Monthly Goal Chart Calendar
• Take Heart Self-Care Permission Slip
• Scriptures: I Corinthians 10:31, Isaiah 30:15, Matthew 11:29 , Exodus 34:21  

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• Find Amy at www.amyjbrown.com/  or on Instagram @amyjbrown_writer
• Find Carrie at www.carriemholt.com or on Instagram @carriemholt
• Find Sara at www.saraclime.com or on Instagram @saraclime

Transcript

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Carrie (0:19) Welcome to Take Heart where our goal is to give you hope, offer insight and encouragement so you can flourish as a special needs mom. Each week Sara, Amy, and Carrie will explore a theme, share inspiring stories, practical tips and encouragement you can use on your journey. Thank you for being here today. During this month of March, our theme has been Self-care for the Special Needs Mom. We want you to join us for the Self-care Challenge. All you need to do is snap a photo that displays a way that you are caring for yourself, whether it's for your mind, body, or soul. Then label it with the #takeheartselfcare and tag us @takeheartspecialmoms. Let’s start a movement of self-care for the special needs mom. 

Carrie (1:10) First of all, I want to let our listeners know that this month, these next two weeks as we do our collaborative podcast, we are doing it in two parts because we have five Tuesdays in the month of March. So this week we're going to talk a little bit about the spiritual aspect of self-care, and next week we'll be talking about the practical aspect of self-care. As we’ve been talking about this topic for the month, I keep going back to the idea that self-care is the type of rest where we have the ability to lay aside the things that are undone to take the time to do self-care. Sally Breedlove has written a book called Choosing Rest, and she says in her book, “At its core, to rest is to give thanks for the present and to trust that as the future becomes the present, God will supply what we need. To rest in the incompleteness of the present moment”

I feel like we see this great example of Jesus doing this as he spent his time here on earth. He was a man, and he couldn't do it all, even though he was fully man and fully God. One of the things that has struck me lately has been, I've been reading the story of when he raised Lazarus from the dead. When he heard that Lazarus was ill, he still stayed in the place where he was for two more days. He didn’t immediately rush off to take care of it. It was because he had a greater purpose and a greater plan. As we think about that in relationship to being special needs moms, I think sometimes we feel this sense of urgency because we have to do all the things. We have to get everything done. It's hard for us to sacrifice the urgent and what's immediate to take the time for self-care. That leads me to my first question, Amy, why do you think as special needs moms it is so difficult for us to leave things undone to do self-care?

Amy (3:14) Well, I think it’s twofold. The first one is we actually have a lot of things to do.  There's always something that needs to be done. It’s not just the actual task of the day, but what about next year or next month? I know for us with kids with attachment disorder, you can’t just blindly go into summer. You have to be thinking weeks or months in advance. What are we going to do? What’s our backup plan? It’s a feeling of hyper vigilance all the time. It’s really hard to come off that feeling of hyper vigilance. If you're struggling with a child with a certain special needs, and then you see another family that has the same kind of special needs, and they're doing okay. You immediately want to do what they're doing, so you’re looking at therapies, medicines, and all that. The spiritual issue behind it, for me, is definitely pride. I think that I am the glue and without me it wouldn't get done. The actual act of self-care is not a hard thing, going to lay on your yoga mat for ten minutes is really not strenuous. But, letting go of control is incredibly hard. I think for me that's definitely what it is. It’s the pride and with that pride is not trusting God. That he’s not going to be sufficient if I let my guard down and go take a walk in the woods for a few minutes. I think it’s two-fold in that regard. 

Carrie: How about you, Sara.

Sara (4:50) I definitely agree with Amy there’s just always something to do. I think when there’s always something to do, if you leave it undone, chances are it's going to be twice as long or twice as more complex. Instead of the one thing that you had to do now, you have three because you missed the window. Sometimes that’s it. I just have to do it now because it’s going to be easier on everybody, especially me in the long run. I think it's a societal issue as well. I don't think it's just for special needs moms. I think it’s for everybody. We are taught that busyness equals success. If you aren’t busy that means you're lazy. Rest does not equal laziness. It's so hard to get into the mindset that resting and taking care of yourself for five, ten minutes is not that big of a deal. People might say, “I wish I could take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. That must be nice.” Yeah, I took a nap because I was up five times last night trying to flip my son. There’s a reason why we’re doing that. There’s more to do later, and we just have that societal pressure just automatically built into us. As far as the spiritual, I agree it just goes back to pride. If I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it better than somebody else. I know it. Sometimes leaving it undone means I'm going to leave it for somebody else to do. I know they're going to have to try ten times harder because I could get it done in five minutes. It’s going to take somebody else an hour. I don’t want to burden somebody else. The spiritual is the pride. 

Carrie (6:43) I feel like I struggle with that too. We have in-home nursing. Sometimes when we're training a new nurse, and she's not doing it the way that I want her to do it, it may not be a bad way, it's just different, I struggle with letting go and just letting her do that. She's here to help me have a break or help me to have rest. It’s giving up that pride and that sense of control that we think we're in control. In decision-making for large decisions for behavioral things, school, IEPs,  surgeries, when you feel like all of that rests on your shoulders, you feel like you're going to change the trajectory of your child's life. In some ways it is on us, but we forget that even if we make the wrong decision, God will still redeem that. God is still in this. We have to go to him and ask for help. 

So one of the things that I was thinking about with self-care is really self-care is a form of worship. Corinthians says, “Everything you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” Sara, have you ever thought about self-care as a form of worship and what do you think about that? 

Sara (8:07) Yeah. Jesus taught us that. Self-care, the phrase isn’t coined in the Bible, by any means, but the thought and the process is. Even Jesus stopped and went away from the crowds. He did it all through the gospels, multiple times. Part of the way that he was teaching the disciples their evangelistic method was we're going to come away. We're going to stop. We're going to pray. We're going to just rest. If Jesus needed to do that. Even God chose to rest on the seventh day. He didn't need it. He wasn't tired and thought I really could use a nap now. It was a choice of God to do that, and if God can choose to rest and take in all the splendor of what we have, it only makes sense that we do that as well. 

Carrie: That's really good. How about you, Amy?

Amy (9:14) When we think of rest, we think of sleep. If you think about how God makes us very unique. If you think about the times in your life where you just light up, whether that’s being out in nature or being in solitude. If we look at how he wires us and makes us, and we pay attention to that, rest isn’t necessarily sleep. Rest could be a really vigorous hike in the woods or a great conversation with your friends over coffee. I think we need to broaden our view of what rest is as worship. I was just finishing this book called The Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas, and he talks about different temperaments. I can't name all nine of them. There's a quiz in it. One of the things that surprised me. I guess it shouldn't have surprised me, but there’s different ways that you connect with God. My number one way was being out in nature. I was kind of surprised by that because I thought solitude was it. I feel full when my lungs are full when I’m out in nature. I wouldn’t necessarily call that self-care because self-care should be napping or eating really good chocolate. But as a worship form, I think we should look at how God created us and our self-care is a form of worship because it helps us connect with him. I think there are ways that we think of connecting with God in worship, in church, in prayer, and quiet time but there are other ways too if we look outside the box of how we’re created. I think that's more restorative than we would realize. 

Carrie (11:12) That’s really good, Amy. I love those thoughts on that. So I guess that leads me to the next question and that is what are some of our limiting beliefs to self-care? Amy, do you want to take that one first?

Amy (11:26) Well, how long do you have? Because I have a lot of them. I just have a hard time relaxing enough to allow it. I think I don't deserve it, honestly. I feel guilty about it. My kids will tell you that they never have seen me lay on the couch. If they do see me lay on the couch, they think I’m sick because there’s always something else to do. I think part of the limiting belief is this I like to call, and I referred to this in my own podcast, as the “Mother Teresa Complex”.  Everybody thinks we're so patient and kind and loving. They couldn't live our life. So when you do need a break, it makes you feel kind of guilty. You’re kind of put on a pedestal. So, I think that’s it and also guilt. I’ve said this before, but we will go to any degree to mother our kids. It's really hard to mother ourselves. Sometimes you just need a nap or you need to eat or something. Because we think that, back to pride and having to be the glue, we don't want to allow ourselves to have that time. For me definitely there's always something else I could be doing.

Carrie: Yeah, how about you, Sara, how about your limiting beliefs for self-care?

Sara (12:50) I think the selfish, or you don’t have time is the limiting belief. I also think for me, especially with this trend of “self-care” over the last few years, you picture that it needs to be easy. It just needs to be something that comes natural. Those people are meditating, and it's just so life-giving for them. Self-care isn't always like that at the beginning for me. Sometimes it is going for a walk and during the entire walk, thinking don't have a panic attack. The house won't blow up; your business won’t blow up while you’re away. You can afford five minutes. You're not that important. I have to tell myself this when I take a walk around the neighborhood. It’s not always easy, and it doesn't always come natural. Just like you have to force yourself to take the nasty medicine sometimes, it’s like that. Once I’m in it, and I’m done, I’m so glad I did it. It's not always something that I enjoy, or I'm just jumping up and down to do. On the flip side of that too, we think it needs to be something so complex. You see people that go and work out for an hour and a half every morning. Then in the evening I go for a 4-mile run. I just want to get out of the house and have the sunshine hit my face. That's my goal today. So you think, well I can't do it all so why do anything. It's an all-or-nothing thing with me. It’s okay that it's just a matter of walking out into my driveway, going to get the mail and taking an extra five minutes standing there to let the sun just hit my face. That’s okay. That’s a form of self-care. 

Carrie (14:41) Yeah. I can relate to that a lot because I always call myself a recovering perfectionist. I'm very much all or nothing. If I can't do it perfectly and can't get that hour workout in everyday, then I just might as well not do it at all. I've been learning recently that at the core of that is the limiting belief that I'm not worth it. Based on how I grew up and different things that are in my past that I'm not worth caring for. I'm the one who's always supposed to be doing the caregiving. I'm not worth the time to rest and rejuvenate. It's funny because at the beginning of this year, something that was kind of floating around social media was this calendar with the months spelled out with little numbers in each of the letters for the number of days in the month. Then you would color in how many days in a row you've done a workout. It was a fun tracking thing, and I’ll put a link in the show notes for anyone who wants access to that. What I have found is that after February didn't look that great, I hadn’t worked out in several weeks, I just wanted to pitch it and be done because it didn't look pretty and perfect. Yesterday I colored in a couple of squares from some days last week that I did get a chance to work out, or I was shoveling snow. I thought, you know what I want to stick with this because at the end of the year, looking at the long-term I want to see how I have cared for myself. It might not look perfect, but I think at the end of the year, I'll be surprised at the times that we did do self care. So maybe I can challenge all of us out there to print off that monthly chart. Whenever you do self-care to color in the date of the time, even if it was just five minutes or sitting down with a book for ten minutes or something like that. Do that self-care. It is important for us to do that.

Amy (16:57) It’s funny to me, how we can all gear up. Carrie, if you’re going to travel with Toby, it is not a simple thing. You have a system and you gear up, and it takes time. We can all gear up for that kind of stuff, but we can’t gear up to put our face in the sun for five minutes. It’s just crazy. I don’t really know why that is. 

Sara: We’re just that important. 

Amy: Maybe we need to have the five minute challenge. What is my five minute challenge today? I think you’re right, Sara, it’s the all or nothing. If I’m not running six miles or reading poetry for an hour or whatever. It needs to be the five-minute challenge. 

Carrie: (17:39) That leads me into the next question and Sara, you kind of talked about this a little bit, but what do you think the Bible teaches us about rest and self-care? Amy, can you take that first?

Amy (17:52). Yes, I will. Like Sara said, if we watch how Jesus lived his life, he rested. He went away to pray. There are several references to rest in the Bible. Obviously there's Psalm 23 where he leads us beside the still waters. I always think where are those still waters? Well honestly, I'm not letting myself be led there. They’re there, I’m just not letting myself be led there. There’s a verse that I think about a lot. It’s Isaiah 30:15, and I’m not going to quote it perfectly. It says something like, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” I love that verse. But the line after that says, “You would have none of it.” He’s talking to the Israelites there. I think of how much that speaks to me. It sounds really pretty to be quiet and restful and have salvation and all those things, but often I won't have any of it - going back to pride. I think there's several ways. Even if he doesn't talk about rest, throughout the Old Testament God is referred to as making a way in the desert, getting water or a well watered garden. There’s all these metaphors and word pictures of thriving, but we have to let ourselves be there to thrive, allow ourselves to rest in order to let him come and nurture us. I think there's a lot of imagery in the Bible. There's also in Matthew where he says, “Come to me if you are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Once again where’s the rest? But I’m not letting him lead me there. I feel like there's a lot more I could say about that, but there's so many verses. God put us in this life. This is his will for us. He didn’t want us to do it without him. He didn’t want us to do it to the point of exhaustion or burnout. He wants to equip us to do it. Equipping may look like tired sometimes, but for the most part, I think, we put that on ourselves. That’s what I have to say about that. 

Carrie (20:10) When you said that about the children of Israel, we are like this too. I'm not pointing fingers at them, but they had this inability to trust that God's way was the best way, and that he knew the future and that he would continue to lead them and guide them. I think about rest for our minds even in the middle of chaotic circumstances. How important it is for us to come to him with our burdens to choose to live by the still waters, to choose to take each minute and give our anxiety to him. There have been times when I look back over our journey with Toby, and there was the peace that passes all understanding. We cannot explain it, except we were in the middle of such a chaotic situation, life-threatening, and God sustained us. God protected us. Sara, can you speak to that a little bit maybe just about rest and the trust and protecting our minds from the chaos around us?

Sara (21:31) God showed us that we were going to have chaotic and busy seasons. He even commanded Moses to rest. I remember my grandparents, they were farmers, my grandma had this plaque up, and it was Exodus 34:21. She always would refer to this, and she would always kind of get on to my grandpa for not resting enough. Exodus 34:21 just says, “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest, even during the plowing seasons and harvests, you must rest.” He didn’t say well only if the crops are going good, then you can take a break. It was even during the plowing season and the harvest. I think sometimes our plowing and harvest seasons are the surgeries, going through the appeals with insurance, sometimes it’s just the day-to-day struggles, the calls from school or what you have. Those are our plowing and harvest seasons. Even then we should rest. I think that he gives us, not just that command, but the grace that knowing that we would need the rest. 

Carrie: That’s really good.

Amy (22:52) Just because you’re resting doesn’t mean you’re not doing it well. I think we can say we just want to do it really well. I don’t want to miss anything. When we don't rest, we just become more frazzled, and then we miss things or are irritable. I think you’re right, Sara, that we’re just going to ebb and flow always. We still need to rest.

Sara (23:17) Like, Carrie, you were saying there was a peace that was incomprehensible. You couldn’t comprehend where that came from. We know that it came from God. I think also that when you take the time to rest, it's preparing your body for those seasons. You're able to get through them better because you aren't so drained going into them. 

Carrie (23:44) On my podcast, I was talking about the definition of Sabbath and part of that definition is reflection and looking back, taking stock over what God has done, what you’ve come through or even things you have accomplished. God did this in the days of creation. At the end of every day, he took an evaluation of what he had created and declared that it was good. I think about that in relationship to rest, sometimes it’s not just taking the time to go for a walk, or to read, or to sleep. It’s also pausing long enough to reflect on God's goodness. The Bible talks about a sacrifice of thanksgiving and a sacrifice of praise. I think sometimes that we don't think about those things as sacrifices, but when we’re doing them in the hard times, they are a sacrifice.  I don't know if either of you have any thoughts just about taking that time to reflect. I know Emily P. Freeman talks about this a lot in her podcast The Next Right Thing. When I look back at when Toby was in the hospital, and he had his seizure, my boys were six and four, I just think how did we survive that? How did we live through that? When I take the time to reflect on it and look at God’s goodness and look at the little ways that he provided, I know that I can continue to trust Him. That is that form of rest because my mind is at rest because I know I can trust him with the future. Amy, do you have any thoughts about that?

Amy (25:48) I do. When you look back on the past, you can say wait I walked through that. You walked through that hard period. We all can name times that we walked through a hard period. Like you said, we all know that God is going to help us get through this next one. We did it with his help. Not only looking back, but also looking at what the true situation is. Honestly, a lot of times what my head is saying the true situation is isn’t really true. I'm anxious and worried about a situation, but I think being able to say this is where I am today. It's not as bad as I think it is. I've been in worse situations, and God was there for me. I think even trying to practice the present moment is a form of self-care. You can think everything is terrible, and I have to do all these things. The house is a wreck. You have all these big declarative statements, but when you really stop and go no wait a minute. It’s hard, but not as bad as I think it is. That’s when you look back and go, God got us through this, I just need to be obedient to the moment. That is a form of self-care. 

Carrie: Definitely. Sara, do you have any thoughts about taking the time to reflect.

Sara (27:09) I typically do that whenever I journal. Every once in a while, if I feel like I'm going through a really rough time, I think when was that surgery? I might go back and look at that sometimes it just puts things in perspective. Sometimes it even helps just for looking back on yesterday and seeing. I was so frazzled, and today is such a good day. For me, it is taking the time to simply write it all down. I have to write everything down, or I’ll forget it. I think it’s a matter of practicing that moment to step back and be grateful for the present moment, just be active in right now.

Carrie (28:09)  I want to close today's podcast with a quote from the beginning of the book that we've been talking about during this episode. It’s actually in the forward. Lucy Show wrote this forward. This is an interesting statement. She was often prodded by her father who was a medical missionary by this statement, “It's better to burn out than to rust out for God.” She goes on to say, “Fortunately between the extremes of burning and rusting lies another option: the way of resting in God.” I just want to encourage our listeners today that we don’t want any of us to live between these extremes between burning and rusting, but living in the way of resting. We believe this is the practice of rest and self-care. Next time in part two of our episode, we're going to talk about some of the practical ways we can do self-care.

Thank you so much for joining us this week on Take Heart. Don’t forget we have the Self Care Instagram Challenge going on and Amy’s resource “7 Steps to Help You Breathe” is on her web-site and there’s a link to that in our show notes. You will not want to miss downloading that. You can follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmom. Please listen in next Tuesday as we continue this conversation about self-care.