It’s the rest of the week. Is there anything that would help you rest right now?
Do you have a favorite hiding place—a physical place that offers a bit of refuge when the external world, with it pressing winds of worry, doings, and pressures, pulls you into a cyclone of motion that spins you so fast you can’t find your internal footing?
Maybe it’s your car? A closet? A shady spot under the boughs of an arching tree? A darkened room in the wee hours of the morning? A hot shower or tub? The kitchen? A chapel? A walk with the dog? A tiny corner in the library or coffee shop?
This past week, Ricardo and I were gifted a tour of the Biltmore Estate—a historic house in Ashville, North Carolina that still belongs to descendants of George Washington Vanderbilt II who built the mansion to be a summer home. He called it his “little mountain escape.”
There is nothing little about it.
We started out under the pointed glass roof of the Conservatory, a light-filled building that houses an abundance of exotic plants. I think we could have spent our entire time in the Orchid room alone, gawking at the 500 plus flowers.
But there was the Walled Garden to wander through, and the grassy hill, mown in perfect stripes, to climb. Then the descent from atop that hill into a picture perfect postcard featuring the mansion framed by a gentle expanse of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance.
The Biltmore is officially recognized as “America’s Largest Home.” It is175,000 square feet. That is a floor space of more than 4 acres. Hard to visualize? Just imagine a house with 250 rooms, 43 of which are bathrooms. Also probably hard to visualize.
The house boasts 43 fireplaces and a two level library with a secret passage connecting it to another floor. An entire room is made up of an empty swimming pool covered with cream colored ceramic tiles that extend up the sides and over the arch of the domed ceiling.
And so on.
We never stopped to think about what held the place up, supported it, kept all that brick, limestone, and slate from crashing down or collapsing in a tornado—until the arrows and numbered guideposts led us into a basement corridor lined by castle-like stone and cement walls. When we tuned in to the corresponding number on our audio tour receiver we learned that the foundation is 23 feet deep and 14 feet wide.
Everything was still—and empty. I’m not sure where the crowd we’d been navigating up to that point had disappeared to. Ricardo and I were alone in the cool silence, a respite from the energy depleting humidity and bustle of tourism.
Perhaps this is the gift of our hiding places—the empty silence that slows down the bustle and invites us to sit down in our own souls, to remember what is underneath all the hustle, to reconnect with ourselves and with God from the inside out.
God is at work in us—as the Apostle Paul wrote in a letter to the church in Ephesus,
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV (emphasis added)
Have you felt the relief that comes from letting go of constant striving and giving God space to work?
Something comes up and your thoughts and emotions get drawn into the whirling stress cyclone, so you pause and notice the high RPM. You don’t force yourself into high gear to fight back. Neither do you get further sucked in by analyzing each thought and feeling in an effort to wrestle the anxiety into submission.
You pause and notice and choose to experience the discomfort—no avoiding—knowing that the winds will die down and the storm will pass.
And maybe you’re surprised, again, at how simply observing without struggle and choosing to go through the discomfort without avoiding all the “stuff” slows everything down.
Like a tropical cyclone reaching land.
It’s not an immediate relief, but it is an immediate shift that propels you towards relief, towards a place of rest from which you can actually engage the challenges in healthy ways, and take effective action towards change.
You settle a little more onto the foundation underneath and you know a little more what it feels like to be at home in your own soul, comfortable in your own skin.
You are deeply grateful that God has not left you and that this is where he’s been working all along—inside. You start to discover what it really means to surrender and to trust.
A couple of days later, you have a long conversation with a person who knows you well. After an hour or so, they comment on how calm you are. They mention that your RPM is zero and that you are comfortable and grounded.
It’s true and you are grateful.
May you keep choosing rest and may your rest be sweet—grounded and rooted in love,
Alicia