Oh, summer…a time of lazy afternoons by the pool, mystery novel in hand; days at the beach, drowsing to the sound of the surf, warm sun on your back; evenings on the back patio, sipping Chardonnay as the fireflies spark.
Wait…what? Your summer doesn’t look exactly like that? Yeah…mine either.
Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, I was at a conference in Wisconsin, my husband Brad was at a conference in Washington, D.C., and our two boys stayed home by themselves for the first time ever. In the 48 hours we were out of town, a water main burst in front of our house, the city had to dig up half our front yard, there was talk that the 50-year-old honey locust tree might have to be removed to get at the pipe (thankfully that didn’t happen), the dog you-know-whated on the rug and a son who shall not be named cleaned it up with the bleach spray he found under the kitchen cabinet, and, to top it off, all my homebound flights were cancelled due to weather, so I ended up having to rent a car to drive 9 hours back to Lincoln. Oh, and my sister and my nephew were due to arrive the next day…and sleep in the guest room where the dog you-know-whated and which was now flaunting freshly bleached carpet.
That’s summer for reals.
Which is why we all need to make a little more time for intentional rest, right?
I have a solution, and clearly I need to be first in line to take my own advice!
My new e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul: 5 Tips for Beginning a Daily Practice of Intentional Rest, will help you:
- Understand the mind, body and soul benefits of intentional rest
- Learn how to step away from busyness and productivity in order to hear the quiet whispers of your soul
- Integrate five concrete steps into your daily routine that will help you establish a short but impactful daily practice of silence, reflection, and rest.
I’ve been practicing daily intentional rest for as little as five minutes a day for more than a year now, and I can assure you from first-hand experience that this little tweak to your day can and will have a profound impact on your whole life.
Five minutes isn’t much…but it’s enough to change everything.
If you’d like to know how you, too, can integrate the practice of intentional rest into your day, I’d like to send you a free downloadable copy of Learning to Listen to Your Soul. You can sign up HERE.
I would love for you (and I) to have a lazy summer spent lounging under a beach umbrella, but if that’s not your reality, the next best thing would be to learn to how truly rest amid the crazy. My hope is that this little e-book will help you do exactly that.
As Ruth Haley Barton writes in Invitation to Solitude and Silence, “The presence of God is poured out most generously when there is space in our souls to receive him.”
Together, let’s make the space in our souls to receive the presence of God, this summer and beyond.
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Friends, if you already subscribe to my blog posts or to my monthly newsletter by email: you should have received a link to download my new e-book, Learning to Listen to Your Soul, on Monday in your in-box. Drop me an email if you did not receive it, and I will get it right out to you. Thank you for reading and subscribing!