For the past six months, I have been on a mission to find rest. I started with my old bag of tricks. Yoga. Minimize the social calendar (well, Covid did that for me, really). Lay on the couch for a day of binging my latest show on Netflix.
These helped, a little bit. But not enough. So I kept digging. Maybe I still have too much planned. Maybe I need to get in nature more. Maybe it’s an imbalance in my writing life.
The last one led me to a course put out by Go and Tell Gals called Inhale + Exhale (sounds appropriate, right?). Its focus is to help you build life-giving rhythms that will help you thrive spiritually and live with passion.
The first week of this self-paced e-course was all about developing worshipful rhythms and prioritizing them in our daily lives. Unbeknownst to me at the time, in this lesson was the key to my mission and my word for 2021: stillness.
My word for 2021: stillness
Jess Connolly, the leader of Go and Tell Gals and teacher of the course, encouraged us to brainstorm practices that help us experience God. Things like reading the Bible, journaling, spending time with others, or worship. And then she challenged us to pick one way we don’t typically practice being with God – the example she shared from her own life, stillness.
I nodded along in agreement as she shared how it does not come naturally to her. I, too, struggle with this. I’m good at slowing down. But putting everything else aside to simply sit and be in the Lord’s presence – not my forte.
I paused and wrote STILLNESS in all caps in my notebook. What’s crazy is, this wasn’t the first time this word, and the concept of being still before the Lord, had been brought to my mind. In this moment it became very clear, stillness was the word the Lord had given me for 2021.
A working definition of stillness
The practice of choosing a word is not something I do every single year. But when, like this year, a specific word comes to focus my favorite place to start is with a working definition.
Stillness according to Google is “the absence of movement or sound.” It’s pretty easy to deduct this meaning, but what I really wanted to know was the Lord’s definition. So I went to the Bible where I found the word “still” in 9 different places.
One of my favorite findings is in the story where the Lord parts the Red Sea. Exodus 14:13-14 says, “Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (NIV, emphasis added is my own)
What was happening at this time was, Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt. They were on their way when Pharaoh changed his mind about letting them go and sent an army after them. The Israelites cried out to Moses questioning why the Lord would lead them out if they were only to then die in the desert. To this Moses responds with the verses above and encourages them to “be still.”
What’s interesting to me is what God says in the next verse. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”
So wait, one second God says “be still” and the next He says, “move?” It’s here in what appears to be a contradiction (but surely isn’t) that I found my working definition for stillness.
When I think of stillness, the first thing that pops into my mind is the physical aspect. Stopping what you’re doing, sitting on the couch, maybe lying down. But clearly God isn’t telling the Israelites to be still in the physical manner or else He wouldn’t immediately say to Moses, “tell them to move on”. Rather, the stillness referenced here in Exodus, is one of the mind.
The Israelites were clearly freaking out. They imagined themselves dying here in the desert. So their minds were most likely a tornado of panic, fear, and confusion. In this moment, they didn’t need to be physically still, they needed to quiet the chaos running through their minds and trust that God would do what He said He would do.
And He did! The Lord performed a miracle by parting the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross and as soon as they had, He released the waters so the Egyptians would perish.
My working definition birthed from this story is: Stillness – the act of quieting my mind to connect with the Lord.
Isaiah 30:15 describes this type of stillness as it says, “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.’”
The benefits of practicing stillness
Psalm 46:10 – the most well known verse relating to the topic – describes the greatest reward of practicing stillness in this way. “Be still and know that I am God.”
When we are able to quiet our minds and focus our thoughts on the Lord we get to know Him better.
And as we do, we get to:
know His heart, His Word, and His promises
solidify our trust in Him as we know He is faithful
recognize His presence
hear His voice through the Holy Spirit
give Him praise for who He is
The last couple months not only have I been struggling with exhaustion, I have also been feeling disconnected from the Lord, and now it’s abundantly clear as to why. When we allow our minds to be constantly full of what we see on the news, what’s going on in the world around us, what we scroll on social media, or even our own thoughts and fears, we lose out on the incredible connection we find with the Lord in the quiet.
More stillness = more connection
But the benefits don’t stop there. Here are just a few:
physical rest
activate the parasympathetic nervous system (which balances the fight-flight-freeze system)
quiet what ifs
minimize anxiety by steadying on the Lord
quiet the noise of the world
gain clarity with less distraction
better focus on what matters
discernment – for decisions and speaking truth to lies
How to practice stillness
After coming up with my working definition – the act of quieting my mind to connect with the Lord – I brainstormed practical ways I could actually make it happen. I broke it down into four different categories: social media, phone, body, and mind.
In case you want to practice stillness and could use ideas of how, here are a few practical ways I came up with.
Social Media:
no social media until I’m out of bed
stop use after X time of night (still working on this one)
limit during writing projects (unless it’s purposeful)
take days or weekends off
be aware of mindless scrolling, turn it off when it’s clearly only for distraction or procrastination
Phone:
don’t take with me into the bathroom (anyone else noticed how much longer we all take when we go to the bathroom because of this? Haha)
leave my phone in another room
minimize habitual pick-ups/check-ins
instead of texting a friend or scrolling in the in-between moments, put the phone down and just be still
no phone in bed
Body:
days for sleeping in
practice yoga regularly
try meditation
plan a day on the calendar with no to-dos
get monthly massages
workout – listen to my body for days of rest
Mind:
For this category I brainstormed things that would help me quiet my mind in an active sort of way.
fun with my niece
drive to sit by the lake
quarterly solo getaways up north
work at coffee shops for more focused time away from home
fun with fun people – games, laughter, things that give a brain break
reading fiction
date nights with the hubby without our phones
lectio divina – a slow, intentional way of meditating on the Word
There are many more ideas I could add, but having a running list of practical ways to practice stillness feels like a great place to start. It’s a process to break free from the constant go-go-go, both physically and in my mind – so I am trying to give myself freedom to explore these options, change it up, and just see what works.
How stillness impacts peace
Here’s my ultimate why behind these practices– the thing that gets me most excited about choosing this word for my year.
The way I see it, stillness is both an action and something that we get to experience. The more we practice the act of being still – quieting our mind – the more we get to experience the abundance of stillness that comes from knowing Christ Jesus.
In John 16:33 Jesus says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Jesus is the master of stillness and peace. He is literally capable of calming a raging sea. You can read the story of when he did it in Mark 4:39, or read Psalm 89:8-9 that says, “O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds me. You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them.”
This world is a mess. The brokenness, chaos, and unrest is mounting. BUT, the stillness we get to experience through Jesus is what enables us to not only withstand anything that comes our way but also find rest and peace right in the midst of it.
The practice of choosing stillness through something as simple as leaving my phone in another room might seem insignificant. But when the practice of it helps me quiet my mind, connect with the Lord and thus tap into His ultimate stillness – that makes building the habit every bit worth it.
Want to join me?
When I imagine my word of the year a visual pops into my head. Picture me sitting in a chair in the middle of a room buzzing with activity; lots of people zoom by, noise of constant chatter fills the space, and screens blaring the latest chaos of the world float through the air. As soon as I close my eyes, the noise mutes and the motion blurs. The scene in the room hasn’t changed. The activity carries on, as does the chaos of the world around me. But I am unaffected by all the movement; I am completely still.
My hope and prayer is that I become so good at practicing stillness that I can make the visual I described above my reality. I want to be so grounded in the Lord, that no matter what comes my way, when I fix my eyes on Him I am unshaken. And friends, I think it’s possible.
The more we quiet our minds and fix our eyes on Jesus, the more we ground ourselves in our Savior and experience the abundance of Him who is steady, firm, and full of peace.
Our awesome God invites us with open arms to experience all the abundance that is within Him. We don’t have to earn the opportunity. We simply have to make a constant choice to fix our eyes on Him.
If you’ve been on the hunt for a word for the year, and this one resonated with you, I hope you adopt it as your own! I’d love to be on the quest to practice stillness with you.