Monday Afternoon, Reading the Same Sentence for the Third Time

After two thirty in the afternoon, the words on the monitor start to blur. It had been an hour since I came back from lunch and sat down, and I was reading the same sentence in an email for the third time. My eyes followed the letters, but none of the meaning came in. Only the cursor on the screen kept blinking in the same spot, and the cold coffee no longer gave off any steam.

The coworker at the next desk was typing quickly, and the sound kept coming across to me like a push to hurry. Twice I pushed my chair back and then pulled it in again as if nothing had happened. I felt that if I got up from my seat now, I'd look like someone not working. So I brought over another cup of coffee and sat back down, and nothing was any different. Only the number of cups had grown by one.

I knew I needed to rest. But I was acting like someone who needs a reason even to rest, as if I had no right to get up before I was tired enough. And because it was Monday, even more so. Even though the dull tiredness of the weekend was still in my shoulders, admitting it felt somehow like giving up too early.

A heart that needed permission even to rest

I looked away from the monitor and out the window. Behind the building there's a small flower bed and a bench, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never once sat there since I started working here. I wasn't trying to put off my work. I just wanted to rest my eyes for a moment. The leaves of the tree in the bed had already turned half yellow.

Before getting up from my seat, I opened still().

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

Psalm 23:2 (WEB)

I stayed with the words “makes me lie down” and “leads me.” In this sentence I wasn't the one earning the right to rest. I was the one being laid down and led. It's a story of being led to a place fit for resting, so it didn't seem to be telling me to first work hard to qualify. Reading it that way, getting up felt less embarrassing. What I needed to get up from the chair might not be a reason, I thought, but just one step.

I left my phone on the desk and took only my ID badge. I sat on the bench and did nothing for ten minutes. The footsteps of passersby and the sound of a construction site far away mixed together, but I didn't have to make out every one of them. The wind was a little cold, and some withered flowers were still left in the flower bed. When I came back, my work didn't suddenly get easier, but the same sentence in the email read as if I were seeing it for the first time. Sitting down and putting my badge on the desk, my hand was far more relaxed than before.

Today's breath — Right where you sit, lower your shoulders and look at one spot outside the window for ten seconds.