Every year at the start of the spring semester, I am always excited and ambitious for all things new: the new year, new classes, new rhythms, new routines. Something of a fresh start in the place I call home.
Likewise, every year at the start of the spring semester, I find myself already exhausted three days into classes. I grow frustrated with myself. Why am I already losing steam? Why do I lack the bandwidth that everyone else seems to have? Why can’t I get out of this unending cycle of weariness?
Yet, as I reflect on the past month of my life, I am realizing that my winter break wasn’t much of a break. I think that’s just the way the story goes. You drive back to your hometown, spend multiple days catching up with friends you haven’t seen since last December, and as soon as you’re done with that, you’ve got family functions to attend. There is food to cook, dishes to clean, little cousins to entertain. And finally, once you’ve made it through the holidays and have time to actually sit down, well, now it’s January 2 and class starts in a few days. Time to load back into the car and drive the seemingly never-ending trek back to school.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to see old friends. There is something so cathartic about getting to reconnect with people who I grew up with. Especially considering that I now only see them a few times a year, if I’m lucky. But that’s not rest.
Now, as I’ve been flung back into the craziness that is being a junior in college, I am catapulted into syllabus shock and I find myself already 50 pages into reading three days into the semester without having recovered from the information overload of the previous days. When will life ever slow down?
The fall semester of ‘22, I learned the term “spiritual discipline” and decided to try it out. So, I made it my goal to read through the New Testament (granted, I was also taking NT100 at this time) and go to every. Single. Chapel. Insane—I know. At the beginning of this journey, I dreaded chapel just as much as the next person (sorry Pastor Greg), and that perpetual dread did not dissipate by any means. Weary and tired as ever, all I wanted to do during the hour of Chapel was go back to bed.
Finally, I decided I needed to figure something out to convince myself that Chapel was somewhere that I actually wanted to be. But all I wanted was rest, not another unwanted obligation on my calendar. So, I figured why not just choose to see Chapel as a form of rest? Yes, I have to be there. But do you know what that means? It means I don’t have to be in class or at work or doing homework. All I can do is sit. I wondered, what would happen if I began to regard Chapel as a sort of mini-Sabbath three times a week?
To accompany this mental shift, I added a clause to my spiritual discipline. Now, I didn’t just have to go to chapel, but I had to be in Chapel. Like, really be there, be present. Focus on what’s in front of me, not the exam I just bombed in my 9 a.m. or stressing about the fact that I didn’t read for my next class. I began listening to what was being said and sometimes, it was incredible (i.e. every single time A.J. Swoboda spoke) and other times, it was like pulling teeth. But even in those bad chapels, I committed myself to still simply be.
As we head into this new semester, I want to bring this mindset with me. We’re college students, and I do believe Sabbath is imperative to general human well-being. But, let’s be honest, most of us don’t have time to set aside a day, or even half of a day, for rest. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t find (or make) little pockets of rest in the midst of all the chaos.
From here on out, rest will not be handed to us on a silver platter; instead, we must seize it for ourselves.