He Makes Me Lie Down in Green Pastures

Psalm 23- while I don’t know any hard and fast statistics on it, I would guess it to be one of the most quoted passages of scripture.  I know it is one that I have know since childhood.  I will admit, sometimes for me the downfall of knowing certain scriptures so well is that I don’t always slow down and cling to them, I have a bad habit of letting the ones I know so well become more rote than real.  In the past week however, I have had the opportunity for part of Psalm 23 to become more alive to me than it has before.

 

Last Thursday I was not ready to admit it out loud, but I had reached a breaking point mentally, emotionally, and physically.  I was navigating a large amount of stress at school, doing everything for our boys while my (still totally healthy) husband was quarantined to our basement, and I was completely depleted.  I left a very stressful day at school to go straight to my OB for a routine checkup and ultrasound only to be stopped dead in my tracks.  He was pretty firm- I was dehydrated, the baby’s growth was slowing down, my blood pressure was too high, and he didn’t like the looks of my keytone levels.  I like my dr, he is a straight shooter who is pretty real with me, and he was blunt.  If I didn’t get some things off my plate, baby and I were going to be in trouble.  He ordered another whole work up of labs and tests for the next day and sent me home with now even more on my plate but the directive to get rid of some of the load- NOW.  I made it to the car before I was completely in tears and called (A) with all the updates from my appointment.  I had no idea how I was going to do it, but something had to give.

 

As I laid my head in bed that night, I reached for my devotional where I had been studying the word “STILL.” And exactly as I needed, the lesson focused on “embracing stillness.”  That is not something I have ever been good at.  I am on the go, looking toward my next responsibility, project, or to-do list, I am on the “high strung” side of life most of the time and I am not good at just relaxing and taking care of myself- actually those things are very low on my list of priorities.  I began praying and begging God to help me embrace stillness- it was extremely necessary for myself and our baby.  Over the next 24 hours I was blessed with help, plans for more help, and a clear pathway to finding some much needed rest.  While I felt like I was in a better place by Friday, my labs showed that I still had a ways to go in taking better care of myself and the baby, so Tuesday began the new adventure of twice weekly “non stress tests.”

 

While they had told me what to expect, I was still very nervous.  Nervous that all this meant the baby could come early, worried about all the extra cost involved in this testing, feeling like a failure that I hadn’t had these issues with my other two pregnancies- I was a basket case.  As I sat in the waiting room for my turn to be hooked up to the machines, I opened my Bible app on my phone looking for some peace and the stillness I had been praying so hard to focus on.  As I clicked to the devotion tab my next reading on stillness came from Psalm 23 “He makes me lie down in green pastures.”  That was never a verse that had hit me before, it just seemed to go along with the sheep references in the rest of the chapter.  But this week it took on a whole new perspective.  I’m not one who is easily “made” to do things, I’m often independent to a fault.  But this week I was literally made to lie down, to stop, to rest.  The author of the devotion talked about the green pastures of sitting in his back yard, but I couldn’t help to think of the fields at home on the farm.  Some of the most peaceful times I have ever spent were out in the pasture checking cows, admiring cows, watching my (a) learn to do the same. 

While I usually resist being MADE to do anything, I could immediately see the benefits and blessings that would come with being made to lie down in green pastures.  A chance to reflect, rest, and care for myself and the baby- the peacefulness of green pastures.  Being made to lie in green pastures was a way that God could still my anxious heart enough to give me PEACE, His kind of peace, and His kind of restorative rest that I desperately needed.  Being made to lie down in green pastures wasn't out of force or punishment, it was a chance to bless me, to care for me.

 

While I don’t know how these complications are going to play out, I’m learning to embrace stillness, find blessings in being made to rest in his green pastures, and seek His kind of rest that restores my soul AND my body.  May you also find a green pasture where you can rest your weary soul.