You have permission to rest.

You think you’ve been resting. That you’ve allowed the rhythm of the last year to finally stop your hustle enough that you didn’t break apart when it all ground to a halt. You haven’t worn pants that zip in double-digit months; your skincare routine is multifaceted; you are deeply into naps; you are a Disney+ content expert; you are no longer swole. After a mighty effort to maintain the old ways, you have embraced the “new normal” and surrendered your busyness. You’re at rest.

But you aren’t. Not really.

Because while your body isn’t fighting stillness anymore, your mind is furiously pacing, laboring over what ifs and shoulds and whens. Inside, you’re agonizing over the time you’ve lost, wincing in shame over languages unlearned and instruments untouched and books unread. You lie awake in the dark berating yourself for not texting, calling, praying, helping, caring enough. You batter your heart in an ongoing war of attrition—it cannot withstand the demands you put on it, and you cannot understand why it stands there, paralyzed, as the world bleeds. Your soul is weary from surviving.

And you wonder why you grind your teeth at night.

You aren’t made to live this way. So stop. Lay down your burden of worry and guilt and trying to make everything okay when it is very not okay. Throw it onto the back and heart of the only One capable of bearing it.

Don’t feel bad—it’s okay. He wants you to.

He wants you to rest.

Not just on the outside, not just because the world says you must, but because you have a divine permission slip, issued by your Father, His signature unforgeable and unarguable, exempting you from attending any more of your own lectures.

Lay down your endless busywork and run home to Him. That is where true rest lies.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28 NIV).

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This post is part of Five-Minute Friday. This week’s prompt is PERMISSION. If you’d like to join in the fun, click here!