I’m writing this while sitting by a pool on a little two-day getaway with my family.
Nothing extravagant. My husband knew I’d been tired for a while, so he decided we needed to get away. Sleep in. Spend a day doing almost nothing. Enjoy a sporting event we all love together. Just have fun.
And apparently, I was more tired than I thought because I slept for twelve hours straight.
Twelve.
When I woke up, I remember thinking, “Okay… maybe I really needed that.”
This summer has looked very different for our family. My husband has been on more than the usual mission trips, ministry shifts, sudden growth, exciting opportunities, family situations, and change all at once.
And honestly, many of those things have been good.
That’s what makes this harder to recognize. We usually know we need to slow down when everything is falling apart.
But what about when things are working? When ministry is growing? When people are being impacted? When what you’re doing could actually be called successful?
Can something be fruitful and still be moving at an unhealthy pace?
I think it can.
Lately, I’ve noticed little things. My patience has been shorter. I’ve been forgetting names and tasks more easily. I’ve started having anxiety dreams about unfinished work or conversations I forgot to have. At night, instead of having a few minutes left in me for my husband or my boys, sometimes I just want to crash and zone out.
None of those things sound dramatic by themselves. But I’ve been here before.
There was another season in my life when I ignored what my body and mind were telling me. Eventually, anxiety became panic attacks. Stress affected my physical health. Even my stomach paid the price.
So this time, I’m trying to notice the warning lights before the engine starts smoking.
And these two days have given me enough distance to realize something:
Rest can reveal what busyness has taught us to normalize.
I don’t normally struggle with giving myself permission to rest. But this season has reminded me that knowing I need rest and actually creating room for it are two different things.
For me, rest isn’t simply not going to work. Rest is being present where my feet are.
It’s sitting by the pool and actually sitting by the pool. Reading a book. Talking with my husband about what I’m learning. Enjoying my kids without my mind simultaneously running through tomorrow’s task list. Journaling and writing things like this because this type of creativity actually fills my cup. It’s allowing my mind to stop carrying everything for a minute.
And that reminded me of something Jesus said to His disciples. In Mark 6:31, they were surrounded by so much ministry that Scripture says they didn’t even have time to eat.
Jesus’ response wasn’t, “Push harder. Look how many people need you.”
He told them: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
I love the timing of that.
The need was still there. The people were still there. The ministry wasn’t finished. And Jesus still called them away.
Maybe rest isn’t something we earn once everything is done. Maybe sometimes we rest because everything will never be done.
Somewhere in the quiet of these two days, I started asking myself questions again:
Why am I doing what I’m doing?
How do I want to do it?
What actually matters?
What am I not willing to trade to keep doing it?
That’s when this stopped feeling like just a little vacation. It became recalibration.
Because one of the hardest things for me to admit is that this summer wasn’t exactly the summer I wanted for my family.
There were little things I wanted to do with my boys. I wanted them to learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. I wanted us to learn a song together on an instrument. I wanted to work on Spanish with them.
And summer moved so quickly that those things didn’t happen.
That doesn’t mean I’ve failed as a mom. But it does tell me something about my pace.
Because ministry can be incredibly rewarding. I love seeing people grow. I love developing leaders. I love creating. I love watching God use something I said, wrote, taught, or built to help someone else.
Even Spiritually Tuned has surprised me. I’ve run into people who have told me something I wrote convicted them or helped them see ministry differently. Someone recently even asked me to mentor them because of it.
That’s the kind of impact I want to make. I want my life to reach beyond four walls.
But I’m also realizing: Impact cannot become an excuse for imbalance.
Something can be working while the way I’m carrying it isn’t. Success doesn’t get to decide my pace.
This may be the biggest realization I’ve had during these two days:
If the pace of what I’m doing for God leaves me too mentally exhausted to be with God, something isn’t adding up.
If I’m too tired to pray…
Too tired to journal…
Too tired to wake up and read Scripture…
Too tired to exercise and care for myself…
Too tired to give my husband and children a few intentional minutes of my attention…
I need to pay attention. Because eventually, what I’m calling productive may actually be taking away more than it’s adding.
That doesn’t necessarily mean everything needs to stop.
Sometimes something just needs to adjust. A boundary. A responsibility. An expectation. A communication pattern.
I’ve even had to practice that over the past two days.
Someone from my team contacted me about something that didn’t need my attention right now. I communicated that if something needs my attention on a particular workday, we have a system for that.
That’s not being difficult. That’s protecting a boundary.
At the same time, I remembered something important I needed to do before leaving. Someone else was depending on me, and I didn’t want them to fail because I forgot. So we found a way to communicate without me jumping completely back into work mode.
I’m learning that boundaries don’t mean I stop caring. They help me care without constantly carrying.
I still want to succeed. I still have goals. I want to grow. I want to do meaningful ministry. I want to create. I want to make an impact.
And yes, I want to make money and build a life where my family can be comfortable.
I’m not pretending those things don’t matter to me.
But sitting here, I’ve been reminded that there are things I’m simply not willing to trade for them. My mental health. My family. My relationship with God.
Those five or ten minutes with my boys at night will never show up on my résumé.
Nobody will applaud because I sat with them and listened to whatever random thing they needed to tell me that day.
Nobody is measuring whether my husband and I had a meaningful conversation before we fell asleep.
But those moments matter. Actually, they matter more. Ministry is important to me. But ministry cannot become more important than the people God has entrusted to me.
And it definitely cannot become more important than the God I’m supposedly doing ministry for.
Maybe that’s what these two days have really been.
A tuning. When an instrument goes out of tune, you don’t automatically throw it away. You stop playing for a moment. You listen. You figure out what’s too tight, what’s too loose, and what isn’t producing the sound it was designed to produce.
Then you adjust.
Maybe that’s what some of us need. Not necessarily a dramatic resignation. Not abandoning everything we’ve built. Not running away. Just enough stillness to honestly hear what’s off.
For me, that also means being willing to ask a harder question.
If I communicate my boundaries, adjust my expectations, protect what matters, and still cannot find a healthy rhythm here… is here still where I’m supposed to be?
I don’t have the answer to that yet. And I’m okay saying that. This is recalibration, not resolution.
But I do know this: I thought I needed two days away. What I really needed was to remember what I’m not willing to trade for success.
I don’t want to wait until anxiety becomes panic. I don’t want to wait until exhaustion becomes resentment. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I accomplished everything I was supposed to do for everyone else while continually postponing the things that mattered most.
Jesus didn’t wait until He’d served everyone before telling His disciples to rest.
The work was still there. And sometimes, it will still be there tomorrow.
Maybe being Spiritually Tuned isn’t learning how to keep up with every demand around us. Maybe it’s learning to recognize the pace God is actually asking us to live at.
And sometimes, we have to stop playing long enough to hear what’s out of tune. Then have the courage to adjust it.
Let’s tune in.
