[Note: This post was written about an experience I had the first week of March, but I’ve just now finished writing about it. So just beware of the timeframe – there is some wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff.]

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To be honest, if I never had to sleep, I wouldn’t. I like to saturate my schedule with everything I want to accomplish. I wake up whenever I naturally wake up (usually pretty early), go to my classes, go to my nightly events, and stay up as late as I can to work on stuff I didn’t have time for during the day. And then I start over again.

But what stinks is I never really get to finish everything I want to. It’s always left undone, and so I go to sleep looking forward to the next day when I’ll hopefully have more time to work on stuff.

And so this weekend, yet again, I’ve been staying up late and getting less sleep. I’m stuck in this cycle: after a few nights of not getting enough sleep, my mind wears out and I feel absolutely distraught. I start to think really deeply about why I feel afflicted, when I would really just be better off using that time to rest. And when I do finally get time, I’ll catch up on sleep for a night or two. I pretend that it’s enough, though I really don’t know the meaning of that word.

The other night, I was walking home from a night class with a friend. She mentioned something so obvious, something I had heard many times before – something that had slipped my focus because of this cycle of burnout and recharge, burnout and recharge. My campus ministry, The Rock, holds meetings and events almost every night of the week. She told me simply that I shouldn’t feel like I have to go to every meeting. It shouldn’t have been such a shock to my psyche – and it wasn’t at first, because I let my mind become so freaking tired and numb.

A series of things happened the next day that rudely interrupted my ever-incomplete pattern of life. For one, I found out that my hairstylist closed her business and moved to London to get married. Which stinks, because I don’t want to drive that far. On top of that, I had some other errands I needed to run, but I kind of don’t have a car. I also recalled what my friend had told me the night before, and I feared that my schedule was surprisingly vacant. So I said, Okay God, I get the hint. Something isn’t right with the fact that my primary aim in life is efficiency. Change me.

So this day was different. I did something I liked to do. I read a book. I started a blog post. I hung out with my friends. And I intentionally avoided the prayer meeting. At one point, I even tried the mental exercise of doing nothing. I actively had to try not to do anything. And it was hard! It was like I stopped pedaling and I just watched the wheels in my mind continue to spin. My mind raced from, I could be doing (fill in the blank) right now, to What do I have going on tomorrow? I shut those thoughts out… and I was paralyzed. I didn’t know how to feel, I was pedaling oh so fast, but to what destination, if any? It scared me to realize how I had lost my focus amidst the busyness of life. Without my master – that blasted Schedule of mine- I didn’t know who I was. I succeeded in being busy, but with what? The wheels were spinning, the machine was going, but my heart was long gone.

I had become my schedule – my schedule had become my identity. I wouldn’t let myself do things I enjoyed doing, only things I was required to do, and I would condemn myself for doing otherwise. And I wouldn’t let myself sleep! And when I did, I would dream about hanging out with friends and playing video games like I always used to do. But God used this experience for His glory, because led me to this revelation:

Spending every ounce of time in ministry or “productiveness” has sapped away my uniqueness as a person, and my delight in pursuing God.

Later, I did something I usually see as unproductive: I rode my bike. When I finally let myself go on that bike ride, a thought came into my head (wonder where it came from): Doesn’t God want me to be happy? Is it so selfish to want to like the things you’re doing, to enjoy the things God created, not as bait or buffer, but just to enjoy them?

That night, I read this verse in my Bible:

“In vain you get up early and stay up late,
    eating food earned by hard work;
certainly He gives sleep to the one He loves.” (Psalm 127:2)

The ironic thing is that I stayed up late again, thinking about this verse and writing part of this blog post. I still wasn’t yet at a point where I could let myself experience true rest. I could not bring myself to that point – I was asleep, and my Father would have to carry me to my bed.

The day after my nihilistic rejection of routine, I was convicted of my dependence on my own actions for fulfillment. I finally confessed to God, I can’t do anything good on my own. I can’t even realize that I can’t do anything good on my own… on my own. God has to teach me. He had to interrupt what I was doing and go against my own plans for the day. It was the only way He could wake me up from my own sleeplessness.

I can do nothing to justify myself, to make myself presentable to a pure and holy God. I wrestled with this conviction all day, and it was not fun. I was helpless to justify myself, because He had taken away the means by which I pretended I was justified. I just felt ugly and gross, but even showering myself with busyness had done nothing to cleanse me.

My sins had included making sacrifices merely for my reputation, not loving God, competing with my friends instead of building them up, and that ever-evasive form of disguised pride called self-consciousness. Now that I had been stripped of my own deeds, I saw my true self, and I was disgusted. I was so frustrated with myself that night! How did I let it go this far? I wrote this about such sin in my journal that night:

“I just realized how freaking ubiquitous [selfishness] is in my life. When I look around at other people, I am constantly comparing myself. And that sounds cliché, but it’s true. That person is pretty. I wish I was pretty. Me. That person is godly. I wish I was godly. Me.”

I proceeded to compare my motives with one of my friends who has made a big impact on many lives. But this was actually good comparison, because I wasn’t the focus. I thought that maybe their thought process went more like this: “That person is here. I’m sitting in a chair. He should sit in my chair, because Jesus loves him. Jesus. That person is hungry. I have food. I will give that person food, because Jesus loves that person. Jesus.”

I continued: “…God, it hit me tonight that I am truly the antonym of You. I’m exactly the opposite. From the outside I can look so much like you… to myself. But I’m not. And now that I know I’m ugly, no matter what, it’s time to stop trying to better myself. It’s time to focus on the beautiful people around me for once. I saw it in their faces today – it’s Your image. That’s what I want to cultivate. And why? Because God, you are the only one who’s beautiful.”

So I surrendered. I had to. As I waited, God started to wring out the self-condemnation that saturated my life so I could start soaking up His love. When I needed fellowship, He gave me fellowship. He gave me friends who could laugh and sing mad libs and make tortilla pizza and watch British sci-fi dramas together. When I messed up, I received acceptance. One night when my team lacked people and a room and things to do (because of my forgetfulness), He provided friends who just happened to be watching Star Wars, and a roommate who forgives me when I burn popcorn and set off the fire alarm. I had done nothing to justify myself, to better myself – and yet I was loved. Because of that, I stopped condemning myself and started loving others. The opposite of pride is not Unselfishness, but rather self-forgetfulness.

Romans 8:1 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is one of my favorite Biblical promises, but the hardest one for me to accept. It’s only because I know Christ that I am free from the law, that I can be imperfect and yet be right where God wants me. Jesus gave Himself up for me, and because of that, I don’t have to give up on being worth something. My temptations of self-justification try to snatch this promise away from me daily – hourly, even. But in this promise I receive the assurance of my identity, security, and rest in the arms of my Father.

When we try to fulfill my own needs, we fail. It’s only when we admit this that we make room to receive what we cannot manufacture ourselves: Grace. What a beautiful letdown, that we are helpless to be justified apart from Christ! Because when we admit defeat, grace meets all of our needs for us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And when we accept His love, there’s nothing we can do to prevent ourselves from loving Him back.

“For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.”

~Hebrews 4:10-11