Returning to Rest and Underperforming 🖋 Alongside Letter #3

Hello friends!
 

I don’t know about where you are, but the first good heat wave of the year has struck in southern MA. Air conditioning beyond window units is very much not a thing in these old northern houses, but strong cross breezes are a gift of third floor life. Of course, “heat rises” is a curse of third floor life too. Eventually we gave up and pulled our big hulking window a/c unit out now storage and set it up in our living room, so I guess it really is summer now. 

And now that the "talk about the weather" intro is out of the way...

I've been poking at writing this letter off and on all afternoon. I don't have anything particularly profound to say, just a few random thoughts rattling around.

First of all, thank you to everyone who so kindly replied to my last letter "When the Past Holds Good and Bad." (Here it is if you missed it.) The moment I hit send, my mind was going “oh crap oh crap I did that,” but then almost immediately I had an encouraging reply from a longtime Rabbit Room friend (hey Micah!) Then y’all showed up with so much kindness and affirmation, with your stories and your empathy, with your pep talks and your prayers. 

One of you said it sparked lots of writing and conversations with close friends about your own journey. Another shared wisdom learned over time about how to keep moving forward and stay grounded when people disappoint (btw, a correction: the foothills are in Alberta, not Ontario. Sorry Rhonda!)

And then I realize, this is the real work of writing. This is the part I love… to see the interconnectedness of our stories, to feel the resonance that tells us we aren’t alone after all. And that has helped things feel a little less overwhelming.

///

Last week, we took a well overdue vacation to one of my favorite places in the world, Acadia National Park in Maine. Some of you already know that this is where Chris and I spent our honeymoon. The day after our wedding in Florida, we had breakfast with my family, flew to Portland, ME, and drove the last few hours to Mt. Desert Island. At the end of the visit, we drove down to Fall River, MA to start out on life together.

Honestly, I just got a little distracted looking at wedding pictures (oh, Facebook memories), letting it sink in that as of June 8, all this change happened 7 years ago. So maybe that’s why Acadia still feels like a place of rest and replenishing, a liminal space between homes, between big life changes. I think we’ve gone almost every summer since then, usually over the span of a work week, driving north as Memorial Day weekend vacationers head back home. No plans. Just hikes and scenic drives and food and wandering around the small towns on the island.


I don’t think I’d fully realized how much I needed that unstructured time and space. While it’s fun to do the familiar, I tried something new this year. I took a few hours and turned it into a writing retreat.

I’m historically bad at taking time to myself. Like, give me a day and tell me to go do whatever I want, and I'm immediately wondering if there are groceries I need to buy or errands I need to run. I’m really good at doing nothing, but structured rest and play don't come easily for me.

Thankfully, a few weeks before, I saw on writer/spiritual director Charlotte Donlon’s email list that she was looking for volunteers to try out some new spiritual formation sessions she’s developing for writers. “Creating a Personal Retreat Plan” caught my eye, so I signed right up. 

The week before our trip, I spent an hour chatting with Charlotte about where I am spiritually, what I hope for in my writing life, and what I might need from a writing retreat. I explained that we were going out of town, and Chris was planning to go biking one afternoon, so I could use something to do during that time. (Reader, I do not bike.) Why not spend time at the cabin by myself, taking time for prayer and to work on writing?

This is where I should probably say that this is not a sponsored letter, and she didn’t ask me to plug her work… I’m just really grateful for Charlotte’s support, questions, and curiosity as she helped me pull together a retreat plan and practices. I’ve been feeling stretched thin, heavy and frustrated with so many things, longing to write and to make space to listen.

On Wednesday, I did that. Chris went off for a bike ride, and I spent a couple hours mostly… doing nothing.

Over-prepare and underperform was Charlotte’s advice to me... generally good advice for life, I’d say. I tend to over-prepare, under-perform, then get grumpy with myself for a lack of performance. But somehow, in this space, in this small cabin with my dog, I read a little bit of Psalm 116 and felt a gentle breath prayer surface:

“Return my soul to your rest / for the Lord has been very good to you.”

Rest. The thing I’d longed for. The thing I barely knew I needed.

In the end, I totally underperformed. It was more like two hours than a half day. I didn’t get much writing done, but I read and studied some Rilke poems, and I sat in silence, and I journaled for a while, and jotted down ideas that surfaced. I think I might have a seed of a book idea in there that's really exciting to me right now, but I don't know for sure where that will go so I'm holding it close and keeping an eye on it.

But if nothing else, that space to rest in a beautiful place and let my mind wander felt like a gift I didn't know to ask for.

It's getting a bit late, and I don't really know how to wrap this up. So perhaps I'll just end by wishing you some rest and that you find something that brings you life in the week ahead.

Peace,
~Jen