Come Away and Rest

Today’s gospel gives us some advice that I am in a great position to follow through with.  Our Lord tells his apostles, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while.”  Then, coincidentally, they all “went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.”  Sounds pretty familiar to me!

There is a great need, particularly in the go-go-go nature of our society, for people to rest.  And I mean REALLY rest.  I had the great opportunity to take about 16 days of leave before my deployment—the most consecutive leave days I’d ever taken in the Navy, by the way—and I challenged myself to really rest.  Usually when I’d make a visit home, I’d sure be resting, but I’d still have the TV on all the time, computer on and music playing throughout the day, etc.  Still seemingly busy, still distracted.  This time around, I tried not to fall into that trap.  Instead, I planned and cooked a meal for my family nearly every night, spent some quality time with my mom and dad, both together and respectively, was able to make it to daily Mass (a rare treat for me!), and spent most afternoons sitting out by the pool in silence (in beautiful 70 degree weather, nonetheless!).  Safe to say, it was real rest.  Rest for my soul.  Not just rest because I was sleeping a full night, not just rest because I was off the ship and away from work, but genuine rest.

I can’t say that what I am doing out here on the high seas is completely restful all the time, because it certainly isn’t.  In light of today being a Sunday, I can share that one tradition we try our best to adhere to is to have “holiday routine” on Sundays.  If there aren’t any major events or operations going on, we really get to rest: no meetings, no drills, etc, and besides your time to stand watch, you get to have what society would call your “me time,” which I prefer to call “God’s time.”  J  Today, our first Sunday of deployment, was indeed holiday routine, and has indeed been restful.  These restful Sundays will become more and more important and more and more cherished as deployment goes on.

Today’s psalm (from Psalm 23) said, “Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul.”  The seas out here are currently rolling and gentle, not tumultuous at all.  And my soul is refreshed today.  My prayer is that our seas remain restful, and that our Lord continue to refresh my soul as I answer His call to set out into the deep.