Rest in Rwanda

I am sitting in my little room in a Jesuit guesthouse in the east of Kigali the Rwandan capital. I have come away for three days rest. February was a full-on month. I was stretched emotionally and spiritually. Additionally, I had forgotten how much transition can take its toll, especially to an introverted affirmation-seeking achievement-focused human being! I really thought I had grasped that I am a child of God and don’t need to prove myself to the world, but moving to a new place and working with new people can throw up lots of the niggling lies, “I am not good enough”, “Am I doing/saying/praying the right thing?” “I need to be doing more”, etc.

I thought I was fine. I thought I was able to keep going. I thought I had balance. Then, the tears came. The tears at inappropriate moments. The tears that were unexplainable. That’s when I knew things were not right. I remembered a really good article, I read while at mission training school, by Bill Hybels. He describes the importance of monitoring all three gauges – spiritual, physical and emotional – and how this plays an important part in our longevity. Like Bill, I had been looking after the physical (eating well, trying to exercise a little more, sleep) and the spiritual (lots of prayer both alone and with others, worship, reading my bible), but had been ignoring the need to look after my emotional health. The heart. The mind. The soul. Time for emotional recharging.

I started thinking about REST. What does it mean to really rest? R.E.S.T.

The dictionary states rest is to cease work or movement in order to relax, sleep, or recover strength.

A wise friend, who knows me very well, emailed me and asked: “are you protecting one day off a week? Routine might be difficult to come by, so it will be good to get at least some things the same each week if you can, so that you have some sense of regularity.”

Sabbath Rest. Such a key to life. How many of us really stick to this? A day off a week. To rest. It is God’s plan. He role-modeled it, in the creation story. Six days work. One day rest. I am very good at filling a rest day with admin or cleaning or phoning people or serving or striving or a combination of all of these.

Another close friend emailed me a quote of St Augustine: “You have made us to be toward yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

It was timely that I was reading Heidi Baker’s new book ‘Birthing the Miraculous’ where there is a chapter titled, ‘Enter into His Rest’ based on Hebrews 4:1-11. Heidi writes:

“There is a place of rest in the heart of God. In this place we learn to trust Him in the midst of chaos and difficulties. As we lean upon Him and hear His heartbeat, we discover its rhythm – when to run, when to rest, and when to release… We can enter into the storms of life and release love only when we have learned how to rest in God… We are called and allowed to rest. God is able to keep His world going, and in the meantime it is very important we do not do more than He is asking… You are going to get more accomplished through resting than through striving. It is important to take a Sabbath… It was amazing to discover that God likes to stop and play… Some of us are so driven that we need to be very deliberate about learning to play- but I believe that if we learn how to play with our leaders and our friends, we will work a lot better… God wants to take you into a greater place of rest.” [emphasis mine]

I took hold of this last sentence and claimed the promise for myself.

So, as I find it difficult to fully rest in Burundi, and it was three months since I arrived back from the UK, I decided to travel to Rwanda for 3 days. [I am now back in Burundi and continuing this…]

For all of us, rest and looking after our emotional health will look different. For me travel or adventure is a way to help my heart feel happy! It was a return trip to Rwanda as I went last year for a week’s holiday with a UK friend Fiona. I had intended to blog about that trip because it was fun and involved swimming in a lake, getting a 7-hour public boat on waters that bordered Congo and many discussions of the highs and lows of living in Africa…but alas it remained unwritten. It was good to be going back to somewhere familiar and this certainly made it more restful. The 6-hour bus journey (plus extra hour at the start to guarantee a window seat) from Bujumbura to Kigali was uneventful despite the high speed and again I was reminded of the huge developmental differences between the countries despite the fact they used to be one-country and share similar histories.

I perhaps didn’t get as much sleep as rest would require due to the 6am Mass in the chapel opposite my room each morning, but I can certainly think of worse things to be woken up by. And, I feel rested in body, soul and spirit from various activities: reading, singing in the sunshine in a beautiful garden, praying, having a massage, writing in my journal, coffee and cake in cafes, visiting an art gallery, hopping on Motos, wandering around small supermarkets, worshipping in an English-speaking church, eating chocolate… Two full days with a travel day either side was just the right length of time before I missed company.

To finish, here are some things about Rwanda that differ to Burundi:

• Roads
  • No potholes
  • Traffic lights that work
  • All the motorbike drivers have helmets and helmets for the passengers and everyone has to wear them
  • Big posh cars and no black fumes pumping out of cars or buses.
• Food and drink
  • Apples readily available in every corner shop and supermarket
  • Pineapple Fanta
  • Cadburys Dairy Milk chocolate
• Cleanliness everywhere
• Plastic bags are illegal, and instead there are brown paper bags (I learnt this the hard way at the border crossing last year when a policeman spotted my underwear-filled plastic bag in my rucksack and I had to empty it in front of the whole line of people waiting to get back on the bus!)
• Not being called Muzungu [white person]
• S-l-o-w-e-r internet – this shocked me.

As much as I enjoyed my little REST in Rwanda, I am happy to be home in Burundi, where I want to continue to live in that restorative rest of God.

“My goal is to monitor my spiritual, physical, and emotional resources so that I can minister, by God’s grace, for a lifetime.” Bill Hybels