Why Restlessness is a Good Thing

                                                                  From webmd.com

 Lately I’ve been feeling restless. Again.

My bouts of tranquility never seem to last for very long. As soon as I overcome one source of turbulence, another bubbles up, leaving my eye twitching and heart racing.Sometimes it's hormones, sometimes it's stress. Sometimes it's just a pressing need to get things done.

These are the times when my imagination goes crazy. I dream high lofty dreams where I achieve perfection and completion…and amply set myself up for disappointment, if not outright depression, at my inability to accomplish the dream—whether in terms of writing, relationships, how my house looks or how my day went.

Why do I do this to myself? I wondered. Why can’t I just be okay with the here and now, taking events and people in stride, rather than building up all of these unattainable goals and crumbling with despair when they don’t work out?

I posed the question to God this morning, and, in my exhaustion I felt all I could do was pray and try to get on with my day. But a nudge encouraged me to continue in my reading of 2 Corinthians, and this is what I found:

[W]e know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God made, not handmade—and we’ll never have to relocate our  “tents” again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The spirit of God whets our appetites by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less. 2 Corinthians 1-5, The Message.

Paul zones in on the restlessness that comes with frustrating living arrangements of whatever kind, and how he then likens it to the restlessness we feel while waiting to see the promises of God fulfilled. It's like an artist who sees something better and wants to create it perfectly, but has to walk the clodhopper road between the perfect vision and the physical manifestation. These are exactly the same kind of anticipation and knowingness—knowing that there’s something better and knowing that we aren’t living it yet.

And we can get tired of the tension.

But the trouble happens when we think that this kind of perfection and completion is available here on earth, and I think this is where my skin gets itchy. I think that if I just try a little harder, focus a little more, give it a little more elbow grease, that I’ll attain that perfection here. Oh, and if I don’t, it’s totally my fault and I should work harder.

Whew. No pressure there.

Instead, what Paul offers is a Heavenly perspective versus a “Better- Than” perspective. “Better –Than” says there’s always something [on earth] that’s better than what I have now, and that I should struggle and sweat and worry until I get it. The Heavenly perspective says a more perfect reality exists outside of the physical and that there’s nothing here on earth that compares. We can reflect it, impersonate it, and look for it. But we can't attain it. Yet.

It also means then that this restless, this itchiness, I feel for something else is natural and good. In fact, if I don’t feel it to some degree, then it means I think this world can fill my needs. The restlessness reminds me that God is the only one that can.

Paul goes on to describe the kind of perspective that we are to have instead:

But neither exile [troubling living conditions] nor homecoming [perfection] is the main thing. Cheerfully pleasing God is the main thing, and that’s what we aim to do, regardless of our conditions (verse 9).

The question at the end of the day is not whether I have accomplished something, or whether I’ve done something “as best I can.” And in contrast, neither is it about not caring at all and giving up on this physical life. In fact, this life isn't about the "doing" at all, at least it's not the priority. The doing is only as good as the heart it comes from. Life is about "being"-- pleasing God, being in relationship with Him-- and neither physical perfection nor performance has a part in that.

So I can embrace the restlessness, let my imagination go, and try to see and find and reflect the perfection. But I can also rest knowing the perfection isn't in the doing; it's in the being.

 This is a good perspective for this restless girl to rest in.