Resting Season vs. Busy Season

Why your resting season is just as important as your busy season…

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Your resting season is just as important as your busy season and learning to be grateful during both creates magnificent balance. I remember a very busy season in my life, only two short years ago when every single day was filled with an activity. If it wasn’t ballet, it was soccer, if it wasn’t soccer it was a parent/teacher conference, if it wasn’t for my daughters, it was a class I was teaching or an assignment that was due for myself. I traipsed fearlessly and aggressively, all across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex filling duties I had promised to take on. Some days I felt like a prisoner in my vehicle. My daughters ate breakfast, lunch and often dinner in the back seat. They took naps back there, changed out of dance gear and into soccer gear, did homework and played road trip games.

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The only reason I was able to push through that season and remain grateful was my understanding of the temporary nature of everything. I wouldn’t be working on my master’s degree forever and I knew that soccer, ballet and school would be on break for the summer. I would periodically have conversations with daughters, thanking them for being so quiet and well-behaved in not only the night class I was teaching, but also the night class I was taking as a student. We were all maxed out and tired.

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After finishing that degree and eventually taking my daughters out of public school to be homeschooled, everything slowed to a crawl. It was similar to doing high intensity training on a treadmill and suddenly the plug is pulled. For a while, I was haunted by a whisper that repeated, “I should be doing something”. Then I realized, I was experiencing exactly what I prayed for and patiently manifested… PEACE.

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It is so important to understand when we are experiencing different seasons of our lives and that not all seasons require hard work. The resting season requires things like, quiet self-reflection, reaching out to people you may have put on the back burner, visiting relatives, watching a movie on the couch with your kids, planning a romantic dinner with your mate, having a cup of coffee while listening to the rain, taking a peaceful stroll outdoors or (in my case) finishing up a book project. The most important aspect of the resting season is, being PRESENT for all of it. For every tinge of boredom, burst of laughter and sigh of comfort. We can’t build without restoration and repair, so when the next busy season arrives we have enough strength, longevity and grit stored away to meet each new challenge with more than burnt out fragments of our being but instead our whole selves.

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LOVE,

Jameelah

. Stop Waiting! Independent Author Workshop June 23rd, 2018, 9am-12pm Instructor: Jameelah Ra’oof Dallas, Tx More info: http://www.jameelahraoof.com/stop-waiting-workshop-tickets . .