The Secret to Finding Rest (#TheBestYes)

This post is part of Lysa TerKeurst’s “The Best Yes” Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with many other inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE. (http://goo.gl/bQVJW0)

It started when I was knee-high to a grasshopper in second-hand clothes living in a white-sided house with my mother, father and baby brother. My father worked nights at the skim milk factory and spent days studying in seminary to become a preacher.

Mum spent her days in an apron baking bread and sewing and ironing and washing and there were no gaps for side-splitting fun. There was no rest for this minister’s family, not even on Sundays, the Sabbath when we weren’t allowed to eat out at restaurants because that would make other people work. There was no rest for a minster’s family and it wasn’t long before I figured out that straight A’s went a long way into earning my way into my father’s heart.

And every day I would stare at the piece of paper on my bedroom wall, the one telling me what my name, Emily, meant: hardworking, industrious. And I would spend hours every night doing homework on my bed, the sound of neighborhood children laughing outside my window.

Grace was a concept taught at the pulpit, but I didn’t know it in my life until I nearly died at 13 from starving, because it was easier to be hungry than to feel. But when the nurses said I should have died at 60 pounds and shivering from hypothermia, I realized I had a heavenly Father who said I was worth saving.

But old habits die hard and I relapsed again at 23 and newly married. I kept thinking all this doing would result in me being somebody, but all it resulted was in tired.

And at 26 when my husband and I were driving, we were screaming at each other—me so hungry to know I was loved, with all of my mental illness—and I tried to turn into oncoming traffic and he took the wheel and pulled us to the road. And I sat and sobbed into my hands.

And we quit our jobs and moved to Korea and started over. I started to eat again. To love again. I moved home to care for a Mum who battled brain cancer and I met a God who sang from the depths of her sleep—her 36-hour coma-sleeps—and he would sing from her lips, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” as I stroked her hair and prayed for a miracle.

“Watch me take care of you,” He whispered to me—the Father of lights—and I watched him take my Mum and restore her health after eight years of tumor. The doctors scratched their heads and wondered where it had gone, and Mum had done nothing to earn that blessing—she’d just rested, while God worked, because we can’t earn God’s grace.

No, friend, the greatest thing we can do is to stop our running and trust that our heavenly father cares for us.

As Lysa TerKeurst says in her new book, The Best Yes, “The decisions you make determine the schedule you keep. The schedule you keep determines the life you live. And how you live your life determines how you spend your soul.”

To do, as Mary did, and kneel at his feet and listen to Him, instead of rushing around like Martha doing all of the right things yet never getting to know Jesus. I don’t want to miss knowing Jesus.

It’s not about being known. It’s about knowing God, who is Love.

A few years after my Mum’s recovery I was sitting at my kitchen table, doing my devotions. I was reading about how Jesus gave the disciples new names, and I asked the Lord—What is my new name, Father?

He told me, “Annabelle.”

And when I went to look it up, Annabelle means “beautiful, loving, lovable, gracious, joy.”

This, compared to Emily’s meaning of “hardworking, industrious.”

Friend, you are beautiful, loving, lovable, gracious, joy—this is how God defines his daughters. You don’t need to do anything, to be somebody. You just need to rest at His feet. He’s got this.

Say no to the world, and Yes to Jesus. I promise: it’s the Best Yes.

New York Times Bestselling author Lysa TerKeurst has written a new book about finding your Best Yes. Many call this book “inspiring” and “fabulous.” I call it a game-changer. You can grab a copy at http://goo.gl/ZFUZbD





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The post The Secret to Finding Rest (#TheBestYes) appeared first on emily t. wierenga.

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