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“Good… just busy.”
I hear myself say it all the time. It slips out easily, like a soft shield—part truth, part gentle boundary. Yes, our family really is stretched between two cities. And yes, I’m often trying to avoid one more thing added to an already full plate. But hidden underneath that little phrase is something truer still, something I don’t always name:

I am longing for rest.
For a pause.
For a season that feels quiet enough for wonder to gather again.

I once learned that when leaves change colors, it isn’t because they are doing something new—
it’s because they’ve stopped.
As the light begins to fade, the leaves simply cease producing green.
They let go of their work, and the colors that were inside them all along finally show through.
The beauty comes from the resting.

Nature keeps teaching us what we keep forgetting:
there are rhythms meant for our good.
There is a way of releasing, a way of slowing, that allows our truest colors to surface.

And yet—if I’m honest—it often feels like rest and resilience are enemies.
We’re taught that grit is built by doing more, pushing harder, producing without pause.
That resilience is earned through constant motion.
The world tells us endurance is something we prove.

But Scripture tells a different story.

Mary’s resilience didn’t come from striving.
Her strength didn’t rise from busyness or from proving her capacity.
Her grit was born in surrender.

When she said, “Let it be to me according to your word,” she wasn’t giving up—
she was leaning in.
Her endurance came not from her own purpose or planning but from her security in God’s timeline.
Her courage wasn’t about holding everything together—
it was about trusting the One who was holding her.

Scripture says she “treasured these things in her heart.”
I wonder if what she was really doing was quietly affirming, again and again:
No matter my circumstance, His way is better.
No matter what I feel, His timing is sure.

It makes sense that people cling to the nostalgia of Christmas. The season itself carries a slower heartbeat—snow that quiets the world, nights that come earlier, a pull toward lantern-lit homes and simple joys. But somehow we rush right past it. We ignore the quiet invitation. We hush the whisper that comes like a soft breath:

Come… and I will give you rest.

So maybe this December we let that whisper linger.
Maybe we allow rest to shape resilience, rather than threaten it.
Maybe we discover, like Mary, that surrender is not weakness—
it’s the beginning of strength.

And maybe that’s where our rest begins too.