Welcome to Today’s Heart Matters with Angela.
Live every Wednesday at 4 p.m. on Substack.
Technically,
Heartbeat Formation, LLC is a spiritual direction and soul-care practice I created and launched in 2023. It represents all the pieces of me collaged together by God’s grace, persistence, and desire. Heartbeat Formation, LLC is what I consider leaning into what I can offer when I responded: “Here I am, Lord, send me.”
It is the “I am” that I lean into. “I am” is becoming, pruning, and being. One of the speakers at the SDI conference in Niagara Falls addressed this concept in a different way. I took away we are becoming, and in that becoming, we are pruning, and then we are being who we are meant to be, who we have always been, just stronger, wiser, with a little less edge and loving attitudes.
The cycle begins anew and again. Life is a cycle. Isn’t it? Have you ever looked back and noticed you’ve been in this place, you attempt to do this thing, and it’s really not new. What you’ve been doing, you have been striving, walking into, looking at all along. Distractions get in our way. People distract us. Money distracts us. Social media, wounds, injustice, ilk, naysayers, and so many other things distract us from ourselves, from our desires, our commitments, from the Lord’s desire for us.
Today’s Heart Matters: A restorative rest blessing.
I’m practicing restorative rest. I’m a fan of the word practice because we practice the practice of all things. We practice sharpening, deepening, applying what we are learning. Each day we should be learning and unlearning then relearning and that’s practice.
The weeks behind me have been fruitful. The days ahead of me will be more lavish with restorative rest. When I conference, it’s the season of planting and resting. I attend a conference with intention and purpose, taking up space and making myself known. The Rev. Dr. Thames (TEMS) spoke those words on IG once and spoke to my heart. I like it when a good word shows up and pierces and stretches, confirms, and affirms me.
I’m not chasing. I enter the conference season with restorative rest, asking the Lord to guide me with a heart that honors Thy will be done. I planned these back-to-back conferences with restorative rest.
Restorative rest means I slow down. I don’t attend every session and I include good networking. Who am I? What skills I have to offer? Does this align with my focus, my goal, and my practice? Restorative rest means hydrating and walking. Not overeating and absolutely no keeping up with the Joneses. I’m not looking at someone else and comparing and working myself to the bone to catch up to them. I’m already my worst competitor, competing with myself.
Here’s a funny one I posted being #1 on Whova, and I stayed there. 110,000 points for being the most active. I had a virtual meet-up with the person in second place. A fluke. She has won first place two years in a row.
She said “I want you to win.”
I said “I want to win and so do you.”
“How do you get all the points,” she said. “You’re a WHovA master.”
I’d never been on Whova before.
It’s a conference app. I really wanted to win. I needed to win. I usually say I don’t want to win, but I rested on being the woman who wins with no guilt. Even my work-rest-play poll had the most responses. I stayed 20,000 points ahead.
I rested. I didn’t need to work so hard. I just played. Thursday I walked to the falls. Friday, I indulged in a two-hour nap and later walked to dinner. Mango Lassi.
Saturday arose early, walked downstairs for a hot latte, and returned to my room. I live-streamed the morning day’s events before heading to the airport.
Restorative rest. Rest in knowing this season of conferencing will end. When things end, things also begin. This is a pre-recording because restorative rest starts with being off screen and off line as much as possible. Imagine what you have on your to-do list, event calendar, travel itinerary, people-to-see agenda and prayer roster. We all have a prayer roster I hope. Hope is what is and what should be, and each day, the distance narrows between the two. (cited by Cynthia Bailey via Parker Palmer). Hope is creative tension between both and how we are moving towards it each day. Hope can be defined in so many ways.
I’d like to offer you a Restorative Rest Blessings
Dear God of Restoration
Give us restorative rest
Refresh our souls
Provide joy in spite of our mourning
Anoint the minutes of this day
Illuminate the work of our hands
Give us restorative rest
That we may practice
What deepens our love
Guides us along unknown paths
Replenishes our spent energy
Give us restorative rest
For the days ahead
Renew our strength, our faithfulness
With divine love and power for you
Our neighbor, ourselves
Give us restorative rest
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