Reset Button

Reset, Pause, Reflect, and Rest.

This has been a hard, but needed lesson I’ve learned in this current season of my life.  I’ve been striving, pushing and going way too much. Some of it was out of need — completing something that needed to get done; and some of it was relentlessly trying to be a high functioning person that really wasn’t functioning well.

I’m a doer and a goer. But my body can’t keep up to the demands of my mind, for many reasons: Chronic Fatigue, EBV and Celiac Disease, namely. These conditions all limit me from being the person I hope to and want to be.

Being a worker is in my DNA, … no really. … I can go back into my heritage and the majority of my ancestors were famers and worked the land; or they were in some sort of manufacturing. Not until recently had I really thought about this and how it might be affecting me today. How does my family DNA/heritage play into my life now? No, I’m not a farmer or work in manufacturing, but those trades to which I was exposed as a child reflect how I strive to work and do at times today. Some of these more physically demanding jobs instilled in me a strong work ethic, but some also gave me unreasonable expectations for myself.

I truly want to honor my grandparents and my great, great grandparents and how they lived. There is a part of me that wonders if they ever got to reset, pause, reflect, and rest. Did they want to hit the reset button and follow a dream or have a break from the overload that life brought?

My grandma Lois was an amazing artist. She would hand-paint ceramics, carve wood and do other amazing projects. I can still picture her sitting in her chair at the kitchen table working for hours, teaching many of us grandchildren her skills and encouraging us to try. For her, this was a hobby; her job was working for a local manufacturer.  Although she brought her artistic skill and creativity to her manufacturing job, I wonder if her hobby wouldn’t have turned into her own Esty shop nowadays and she’d be killing it at the local farmers market/craft fair.  When she was here on this earth no one called her an artist, but she really was. I wish I could have called her that.

I’ve had to learn how to hit the reset button: To stop before I’m so exhausted that I can’t move or have a nervous breakdown. Because of my DNA and heritage I think it’s something I will always have to be learning. Seriously, I was born a dreamer. Since a very young age I had big dreams that I expressed and ran after with all my might.

Are there area’s in your life that you want to pause and hit reset? What does hitting reset look like for you? Our world esteems busyness, but you don’t need to do so. What do we gain by being busy or taking on too much? When raising humans it’s important that we teach them how to take a pause.  Do we need to hit pause and reset for our children? Maybe we are asking too much of them. Maybe they don’t want to play sports or an instrument or be in one more activity. Maybe what they need is to be still and have time to truly reflect.

The other night I was on a bike ride with my older son. I stopped and told him how much I loved that we had a free night to be able to just go on a bike ride with one another.

He said, “Oh me, too, mom. I enjoyed playing baseball this summer, but I was just done with all the practice and games.”

I told him that I enjoyed watching him play, but I think we were all done as a family running every night to something. That night riding on a bike was a reset for both of us. We connected deeper and were able to reflect with one another, too.

Resets don’t have to be big life changes just small things that remind us of who and what we are. Small spaces of time to reflect on where life has been going and where we desire or hope it goes, as well.

Since we have been doing this in our own home. It’s been amazing! We aren’t perfect, but just having more awareness of when we need to rest, pause, reflect, and rest.