Once upon a time, there was a global woman. She lived in a faraway land, serving community and family with skill and a smile. Her language ability growing with each passing day, she began to feel more at home in this land once full of strangeness. 

As the sun rose, you could find her cooking breakfast, and greeting her house helpers as they arrived for the day. Don’t be fooled—though others swept her floor, cooked her lunch, and washed her laundry, she was sure to put in a full day’s work with language study, visiting neighbors, attending meetings, keeping supporters up to date, shuttling kids to school, and encouraging those around her. With the setting of the sun, you could find her playing outside with the neighborhood children and her own, or perhaps chatting with the women of the community. A sense of purpose kept her going, and she was thankful to be a part of Something bigger than herself.

But as the weeks and months marched by, she came to realize that this life, this culture, was not entirely like her own. Things drained her here in ways that didn’t in the land of her birth. Seemingly random traffic patterns. Unspoken cultural expectations. Poverty and sickness. Always standing out in a crowd. Being expected to drop everything to attend a funeral within hours of a death. No chocolate chips, or marshmallows, or Mountain Dew (it’s getting real…!).

And one must always do their part in serving or else be deemed lazy, or even worse, expendable (or so she’d heard). 

Then, one day, in the middle of the rush of doing what seemed like a hundred things, this woman felt a need, an invitation, to stop. 

And so, as if accepting an invitation from the Savior himself, she took the afternoon off. Yes–off! She snuck away to sip iced coffee and read Scripture. She relished in God’s love for HER. She breathed in deep the truth that rest is a gift meant to be relished. For without this time to rest, all her service would be in vain.