I was on the go the entire weekend. I sat down late Sunday night and realized how tired I was. I hadn’t felt tired in the middle of it all. Sometimes it takes a pause in order to feel the reality.

A pause can reveal many things.

• We need something we had been ignoring—often some sort of nourishment, whether it is relational, emotional, or spiritual.
• We need to correct something, perhaps weeding out something unhealthy in our lives.
• We need to explore something. Maybe we’ve been going through the motions with little intention.
• We have complicated feelings and experiences that need untangled, because we keep tripping over what we ignore.
• We need to clarify what we value and re-examine our priorities.

Some people tend to freeze when overwhelmed or exhausted. Others tend to constantly move. Some find comfort in stagnancy; others find comfort in activity. And perhaps comfort is the wrong word, because our experience isn’t comfort. It’s actually the discomfort that drives us farther into ourselves and away from others or perhaps toward a fervor of activity. We choose what is familiar, whether it’s healthy or not.

And that’s the problem.

But the pause it part of the solution.

A pause isn’t a time to completely check out. Sometimes it’s a time to check in. As our mind slows down, we get to take inventory on our choices and patterns. We get to ask what’s healthy and what isn’t. We get to set goals so when the rush returns, we have tools and a plan.

We won’t get it right sometimes, but we can move beyond the pause with some intention and authenticity.

I sat in the pause and felt tired, appreciative, and joyful. I thought through a few things I could improve upon the next time I was in similar circumstances. And I slept well after the pause—before the sun rose on a new day of opportunities and challenges.