There is a specific kind of tired that a full night of sleep does not fix. Your body stops but your mind does not get the memo. It keeps running through the list, replaying conversations and thinking about what still needs to happen tomorrow. You wake up already carrying the weight of the day before it has even started.
That was the reality of trying to balance work and graduate school at the same time. There was always something that needed attention and rest kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list like it was optional. Rest started to feel like something that belonged to a different season in my life. That meant I had to figure out what rest could look like inside the chaos instead of waiting for it to settle.
What rest looked like in that season surprised me. It was not a full day or a long weekend with nothing planned. It was ten minutes of quiet before the day started. It was choosing not to open my laptop after a certain hour even when my mind was still running. Those small decisions did not fix the tired but they kept it from turning into something harder to come back from.
The version of rest that works for you right now may look nothing like what it looked like a year ago and that is okay. What matters is that you stop measuring it against a standard that does not fit your current season. Rest is not one size that fits all and learning what it actually looks like for you right now is its own kind of discipline. That shift in thinking changed how I moved through the rest of the season.
Think about what rest has looked like for you lately. Not what it used to look like or what you wish it could look like but what is actually available to you right now. If this resonated with you share it with someone who needs the reminder that rest does not have to look perfect to count.
Image Credit: Sumali Ibnu Chamid, Alemedia.id via Canva Pro
The Organized Middle 
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