Focus: REST!

Hi!  I’m back from my Rest-cation!  Hope you all had a good and restful week too!

I am so glad I took the time to rest last week.  Why is that so hard?  I mean, really.  Rest.  After trying to practice it even more these days, the word still seems unfamiliar to me–almost foreign.

I have been known to share with others that I feel “Rest is Productive”.  Do I really believe it?  Yeah, I guess somewhere in a little nook of my brain I’m starting to accept that.  Why?  Because after 2 years of being forced to do more of this strange concept called “Rest” (not to mention the other 8 years of supposedly “resting” my body with an MS diagnosis) I have found that I actually feel better when I do so.  Before my lupus diagnosis 2 years ago, I found that rest was only something I did because I had to and because it “kept me going” like the Energizer Bunny.  I don’t really know that it helped that much to be honest with you.  My head wasn’t in it.  That’s for sure.  Now I find that it actually helps me function better and get on with my day.

BUT I still only really REST when I have been kicked back on my butt.  So there I was last week on my Rest-cation thinking I’m totally getting this Rest thing down.  I mean, if you asked me before Thursday, I was SO RESTING.  Right?  Well, sort of but not fully committed to it.  Then on Thursday after I felt I had rested at home enough and wanted to get out and do things that might be restful for my mind, my body decided it really needed more REST–it was feeling AWFUL with terrible fatigue and pretty weak–and I had to LITERALLY get on my butt on the couch with my feet up and REST.  I mean, really.  Hadn’t I already been doing that?  I guess not as much as I should’ve been.

So I did just that.  I RESTED.  I didn’t have much choice.  I didn’t want to feel any worse.  I learned a valuable lesson too.  That lesson included an actual realization that even RESTING can cause symptoms in my body and that it isn’t all MY FAULT.  I didn’t do ANYTHING to make me feel worse.  It JUST HAPPENED.

That is huge.  Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about my health has told me before that none of this is my fault and I have no real control over whether I feel better or worse and that sometimes these things really are RANDOM.  Go figure.  RANDOM.  I have 2 diseases.  They are going to act up whether I want them to or not.

I CAN ONLY DO WHAT I CAN TO MAKE SURE I DON’T EXACERBATE THEM FURTHER.

I CAN CHOOSE TO REST.