The 7 Types of Rest That Will Save You from Burnout with Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith (Re-Aired) - podcast episode cover

The 7 Types of Rest That Will Save You from Burnout with Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith (Re-Aired)

Jul 02, 202539 minSeason 7Ep. 340
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Episode description

Feeling burned out and wondering why sleep isn’t enough to truly restore you?

Welcome to The Collide Podcast Summer Highlight Series!

All summer long, we’re re-airing some of our most impactful episodes — conversations that have stirred hearts, sparked healing, and inspired real-life collisions with Jesus. Whether this is your first time listening or a return visit, each episode is filled with life-giving truth and purpose.

This episode originally aired in April 2024 and quickly became a listener favorite. In this conversation, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith offers a transformative framework for understanding rest—not just sleep, but seven specific types of rest we all need to truly refresh our bodies and souls.

About This Episode

Burnout doesn’t just happen from doing too much—it can happen from not getting the right kind of rest. In this episode, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith unpacks insights from her book Sacred Rest and shares her personal journey through exhaustion and into restoration. You’ll gain practical tools for recognizing your rest deficits and learn how to begin replenishing what’s truly empty.

Meet Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith

Dr. Smith is a board-certified internal medicine physician, speaker, author, and work-life integration researcher. She’s the founder of Restorasis, a wellness-focused organization dedicated to burnout prevention and restoring well-being in the workplace. With deep expertise and lived experience, she helps people reconnect with the kind of rest that actually heals.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

  • Why sleep alone doesn’t equal rest
  • The 7 types of rest and how to identify which one you’re missing
  • How burnout shows up in unexpected ways
  • Practical strategies to begin restoring your energy and joy
  • How rest connects with your faith, purpose, and calling

How This Episode Will Encourage You

If you’re feeling depleted, overwhelmed, or like you’re running on empty, this episode will help you name what you’re missing and offer a path back to peace. You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of how rest is sacred, strategic, and essential—not just for surviving, but for living fully into who God created you to be.

🎧 Listen & Subscribe - Don’t miss any new episodes! Subscribe to the Collide Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.

Check Out These Collide Resources Inspired by This Episode

6 Places to Go Looking for God – This guide will help you find and experience God in fresh, life-giving ways, encouraging spiritual growth and renewing your faith.

Collide Women’s Conference - Join us for a powerful one-day event filled with inspiration, connection, and encouragement to help you pursue healing, purpose, and deeper faith.

✨ Learn more and grab your ticket at wecollide.net/conferences

Connect with Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith - Website | Instagram | Facebook

Connect with Willow -

Transcript

Hey there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide and I am so glad you hopped on today. If you are a subscriber, I love that we get to hang out with each other every single week. And here hear from people who are experiencing the living God showing up and doing amazing things in their life and through their life. And today's no different.

I got to sit down with Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith, who is an internal medicine physician, a researcher, a speaker. She is an author of several books, and today we got to talk about her book, Sacred Rest. And I don't know about you, but if you're like me and. And you sort of roll your eyes and you don't want to talk about rest because your to do list is too long and your responsibilities are too heavy, and you don't want someone telling you to stop and do nothing, that's often how I feel about rest.

But I promise you, this conversation was so much different than that. In fact, I just heard things from Dr. Sandra about rest that I have never heard before, so. So take a listen. Well, Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith, it's so good to have you on the podcast today. Welcome in from Alabama. Thanks, Willow. Excited to be with you. Yeah, I obviously did a little research on you. You're a physician, a speaker, an author, a researcher. You've been featured on many major networks.

You are a featured te talk speaker. You've given keynote talks at a variety of corporate and nonprofit events. I mean, there's just this long resume of so many things you've done. And I looked at this, and I thought, wow, this woman has worked really hard to get into the work of inviting people to recover and rest from overworking. You know what? I. I could understand why you think that, and I do feel like I have worked really hard.

But one thing that's really interesting with that entire journey is after wr writing my book on rest, I had a season where God actually kind of pulled me away from the marketing and the research and basically gave me kind of an invitation to watch him do it. So some of the. The bigger names that you see there, I didn't lift a finger. I basically stood in awe of God orchestrating it all. So it's been really an interesting journey.

Well, I figured there must be a story behind your passion to invite people to rest, to invite people to recover from burnout. There must be something that you've experienced, you've seen or witnessed firsthand that's given you passion about this topic. Can you tell us More about that? Yeah, there definitely is. I burned out in my burnout journey started pretty soon after I started my practice as an internal medicine physician. I was in practice for about five years.

It was around that time that my husband and I were blessed with children. Both of our sons came kind of back to back. They were 21 months apart. And I thought I had it all together, ready to be a mommy and do all the things. But that was kind of the last straw on my capacity.

And I just remember one day coming home from the office after, you know, doing everything I had to do there and picking up the boys at daycare and getting them home, and I was just like, I don't have anything left, God, I am just done. And I put them kind of in front of the TV just to entertain them for a moment while I could kind of get a moment to breathe. And I just laid out on my foyer floor and I. And I. And I just started weeping. It was like such a moment of complete desperation.

I. I didn't know what else to do. I felt like I was giving it my all and I had just come to the end of myself. And I remember laying on that floor and it was one of the first times I'd ever felt God kind of speak to my heart. I heard, I hear people say, oh, God spoke to me. And I didn't hear any audible voices or, you know, anything like that, but. But I know he spoke to me because in that moment I really just sensed him speaking.

The really inquiring of me what I thought the issue was and how did I get to this situation. And really the specific words that I. That I felt I heard was, you have never inquired of me about this, about the need to rest, about the need to stop, what the rhythm of your should look like. Because I spend a lot of time asking God what should I be doing, but not what is his rhythm for doing it. Those are very different things, aren't they? They really are.

Because, you know, you can do, as you mentioned, you know, as your initial comment, you can do a lot of things in your own strength. And a lot of women are very gifted. They are gifted to the point of being able to accomplish much without God, but in the process of that they burn out. And the process of that they lose their energy because they have limited capacity. They have limited power. God is all powerful in all capacity.

And so when we understand that we need the infinite source of all capacity to be continuously pouring into us so that we can continue to do the work that we feel like we're called to do and to do it with excellence and to do it with joy and peace. It has to come from him. You know, it's interesting because you used a phrase earlier when you were talking about you felt like you were giving it your all, and I think so many of us feel like that.

And obviously you were a hard worker, you were accomplished, you finished an education that led you to become a doctor, you had your own practice, and here you have two kids, and it's just this thing that sort of tips you over the edge. And I think when we get there, a lot of women I know and myself as well, we're driven and we have big dreams and goals, and we know we're strong.

And when we say, oh, I've given this my all, and we crash, we sometimes just say, well, I'll just give it more of my all. Like, I'll just keep working, keep trying, keep hustling. I'll keep burning myself out. It's almost like we try to draw from a tank that doesn't exist. Oh, that's so good and so true. And I can definitely relate to that because that's. That's what got me to that point. That's what got me to the point of. Of really collapse in my. In my foyer floor that particular day.

I think sometimes I. I term it toxic independence. You know, my upbringing, how I approached life, it was one of those things where my. My childhood wasn't necessarily easy. My mother died in childbirth.

I was raised by a great grandmother who was 77 when she got one of those things where I always felt like, you know, what, if I want things to happen in my life, I have to take ownership, and I have to make sure I do everything that I can do to make things, you know, come out the way that I want them to come out. And so for me, rest was something, was not something that you actually put any value in. Rest was like what lazy people did when they didn't know how to keep up with the rest of us.

Pe us Marthas who were getting stuff done, you know, it's like, I'm not a Mary, I'm a Martha. I do. Right, Right. So that was my mindset. So, you know, this. This conversation on rest with God, he could have probably have told me anything else, and I would have been like, yes, God, let's do it. He said the one thing I did not want to hear. So you're laying on the foyer floor, you're crying, you're completely just at capacity or over. What happens after that, he speaks to you, and then what?

Well, right after that moment, I was a little bit shocked because God, like I said, I was, and I hate to say this because now after, at the time, my husband and I were leading Bible study in our home, and we were, you know, highly involved in our church, and I knew a lot about God. I, I, I'm a student, so, so I studied the Bible, so I knew a lot about God, but I didn't know God, and I certainly didn't have any kind of intimacy or relationship.

And so that moment was a little bit like, who are you? You know, like, what, what was that? What just happened? Well, you actually talk, right. Like, you, you still talk to your people. This isn't like, just something that happened, you know, billions of years ago kind of thing. And so it was a bit unnerving, to be honest with you, because it, it pulled apart my religiosity and what I had gotten used to. So initially after that, it started with just reading the Bible in a different way.

I'm like, wait a minute. You actually, you're actually still talking to people? Like, you're able to speak to me internally in a way that I comprehend. It's not me. And so I started reading the Bible and actually evaluating some of that because it opened up a part of my awareness of who God is now. So that's where it began.

And then after that aspect of it, one of the scriptures that really stood out to me because I was reading the Bible with a focus on rest, because that was the word that was, like, bouncing off every wall in my brain. And so one of the scriptures that stood out was from Isaiah 30:15, and it stated, in returning and rest shall you be saved. In quietness and trust shall be your strength. And that sounded great, but the next sent is, is what floored me. It said, but you would have none of it.

And I stared at this piece of Scripture, and I was like, you're talking about me, aren't you? Like, like, like, I sure, other people are reading this book, but you're talking about me right now. You have given me an opportunity, an invitation, a gift, and I am literally shoving it back in your face. And that started me approaching rest in a very different way. Hmm. So did you have.

Because I want to get to the different way that you approach rest, but did you have a moment where you've hit capacity? But it's not like when God speaks to you. All of a sudden your responsibilities disappear and your practice doesn't need you. Your kids don't need you. Did you have a moment where you started panicking and you. Does that mean, Lord, are you asking me to quit my job, quit this, stop doing this? I mean, did you have a panic moment of. What are you.

What are you going to ask of me? Oh, absolutely. I. I could probably say I've had panic moments like that multiple times in multiple areas of obedience when God asks something of you. Because usually the ask is something of you releasing, which never feels right in the moment, usually. So. So, yeah, multiple opportunities to experience that. In this particular case, however, I didn't so much feel that.

I would say I felt that when he asked me to give up my medical practice and to start my own business around this book idea that he gave me, that's when I felt that. But in this particular moment when I was going through all of the kind of exploration of the Bible and rest, I felt like the struggle that I had in that moment was God. This is hard. I. You didn't make me to be a person who easily rest. You know, I mentioned Mary and Martha. I felt like you made me a Martha.

My, you know, my personality, it's one that is very driven. I mean, that's. It is one that likes goals and is oriented and, you know, has this level of organization is what actually makes me able to function at a certain capacity as a doctor. It's like you. This, these are gifts, but the gifts also have something that has to be tapered with your spirit for it to have its full expression.

And that was what I struggled with the most is, is getting the identity of who God says I am to override the programming of what I had personally developed myself into. So tell us about this moment between God flooring you and you kind of becoming an expert in some sense, writing multiple books and leading an organization that focuses on inviting people to rest and recover. How did you. What was the season like of practicing the rest before you became a teacher of it?

Yeah, there was over 10 years of that. 10 years of the practicing. The practicing was a slow process because it was so. There were so many layers to it. You know, within my book, Sacred Rest, I talk about seven different types of rest. Well, these didn't just kind of flush out, you know, immediately. It was kind of a progression of learning about rest and seeing new things and the.

In the word of God and getting new revelations about what that looks like and even how Jesus applied rest in these different areas. And then, you know, it's one thing to have knowledge, but it's another thing to have Understanding and how to actually apply it within your own life. I mean, it was like going up these levels. Would start to understand something, particularly sometimes understanding it in the scripture and then seeing how it related to the science. Because from.

For me, they're so intertwined with each other that it's hard for me to read one without immediately my brain pulling in research from the other. And so just seeing how they overlapped and then trying to determine now, okay, God, I see these different pieces that are in essence colliding with each other. How do I now actually put that into practice? Like. Like realistically in my life? So it was a long process, about 10 years. You know, I. My kids at the time this began were two at the old.

The oldest one was two. The youngest was an infant, and so. And now one's 20. The book's been out for roughly seven years. So all of that time in between there, roughly 10 years was all of the, the training. So when I'm thinking about people listening and they're so tired and weary. What are some indicators of burnout? Like, speak to how we would know if we're about to be floored like you were. Yeah, that sort of.

The World Health Organization actually has a definition for burnout, so I'll start there. And they begin with basically having three components. The first is that you're tired all the time. The second is that you no longer enjoy the work that you do. So you may be showing up at work or parenting or whatever it is that you do on a regular basis, and you don't even enjoy it anymore. You've lost the, the passion for it.

And then the third is that the work that you produce, whatever it is you're producing, is at a lesser capacity of what you're actually capable of producing. So it's, it's. So the lack of energy is actually dampening your effectiveness, your impact. And so the types of rest I talk about, the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory, creative, all have different characteristics that you can see when you have a rest deficit in those areas. And so they.

Those are a little bit different because each one has its own specifics. But in general, that's what the. Well, the World Health Organization is describing. This. This phenomenon they've now called burnout. I love you defining those for us because I think it's easy for us to sort of take a personal inventory. When you just listed off multiple things. Were those the seven types of rest that you speak of in your book? Can you talk to us more about those? I'd love to Hear more? Yeah, so.

So I'll go through each one and just kind of give a brief description, so to speak. So physical rest includes two types. There's passive form of physical rest, which is the sleeping and napping we're all familiar with. And then there's an active form of physical rest, which are everything that you do to improve your blood flow, your circulations, your lymphatic strainage.

So is everything from, you know, taking a prayer walk where you're not trying to like click off Fitbit steps, but just trying to get your blood flowing to stretching to a massage, to those types of things. Then there's a mental rest, which evaluates how well you're able to concentrate and focus and to clear your mind. And so if you're someone who tries to go to sleep at night and your mind's racing and you're thinking all the thoughts and you can't get your head to.

To quiet down, then that's a mental rest deficit. That's a symptom of that. Or if you have a hard time concentrating, it seems like you can't focus your attention. It's always floating off to something. Spiritual rest looks at not what the disciplines of learning about God, the Bible reading and the scriptures and all of that devotion time, all of that's fantastic. Is really more about building a relationship with God, is focusing more on that level of intimacy where it.

You're reading the scripture, but you're reading it from a standpoint of relationship, not ritual. Then there's emotional rest, which looks at how well you feel you, or how free, I should say you feel to express your emotions. Or, or if you are on the other side of emotional rest, you have emotional unrest. You are holding on to emotions and so you are keep. People pleasers tend to have emotional rest deficits. Those who have a lot of professional emotional labor attached to their job.

So those who are in nursing or counseling or, you know, teacher or something, any profession where the term compassion fatigue pops up, those are forms of an emotional rest deficit. And so having opportunities to be able to express those emotions freely with places where that feels safe is a form of emotional rest. And then you have social rest, which looks at the relationships in your life.

Most of the relationships are in our life are negatively pulling from our social energy, causing social rest deficits. And then we have to determine who are the people in our lives that are actually pouring back into us socially. They are, they don't need anything from us. They are the, the, you know, the friends and the people, the people who aren't putting demands on us socially because reality is the people who are putting demands on us.

The kids need places to go, the spouse needs things, your elderly parents need help at their doctor's appointments, all your colleagues, your co workers, all these people need things from you. Who doesn't? And unfortunately, most of us have fewer adult friends now than ever. Career and family has kind of taken precedence over friendships and community.

And so it pulls from our social resting, pull the people we can actually, that are life giving, that are actually pouring back into that, that area of our, of our well. And then the final two are creative and sensory rest.

Sensory rest deals with evaluating the sensory implants around you, being aware that the lights, the sounds, the smells, all of these sensory tactile things that are approaching at you, that even when you try to ignore them, or some people will say, well, you know, it doesn't bother me, I just ignore it. Your brain has to filter that information for you to even be able to ignore it. And so sensory overload syndrome is very common in our, in our culture.

From our cell phone notifications to, you know, the electronics that we're using, all of those things have an effect on sensory input.

And so sensory rest is being aware of the need to downgrade some of those sensory inputs, turning off the notifications, limiting sensitive time that you're online, or even that you're using electronics as you approach bedtime, dimming the lights before going to bed in the evening so that your circadian system will begin to re regulate and understand, hey, we're about to wind down, let's start now those types of things with sensory rest.

And then the last is creative rest, which evaluates our ability to appreciate beauty. Creative rest can be either man made beauty, like art and music and theater and all of those things, or it could be creative beauty like the trees and flowers and the mountains and the ocean. But recognizing that we use a lot of creative energy and problem solving.

So if you are someone who's having to think outside of the box, solve problems, you know, this is everybody from a teacher having to solve a problem between students in a classroom to a parent trying to solve the problem of getting schedules to mesh together with their family, all of the problem solving we do drains our creative energy because it takes that to be able to solve the problem.

And so recognizing that the appreciation of beauty, the awe and wonder that creativity and beauty kind of inspires inside of us, actually fills back up that innovation well, so that we stay at a high level of creativity. Wow, I just took notes on all of these because I, I think they're so, I mean, they're kind of opening my eyes up to so many different ways that I can rest and also evaluate. Am I resting in these ways?

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To join us for an impactful night. Wow. I just took notes on all of these because I, I think they're so, I mean, they're kind of opening my, my eyes up to so many different ways that I can rest and also evaluate. Am I resting in these ways? What happens if someone is doing it really well in one way and not in six? Yeah, that's the problem. That's exactly the problem. You know, a lot of people right now are saying, I'm so tired. And I get it.

You know, we, we poll the US in general, on average, 60 to 70% of people right now even define themselves as being burned out. You know, they have multiple characteristics of the World Health Organization's definition. And so the problem is when we say I'm tired, it doesn't actually give you adequate information to solve the problem. It would be like someone coming to me at my doctor's office and saying, hey doc, I have a pain. Okay, is it a chest pain or a foot pain?

I mean, where the pain that dictates what I do. However, when we say I'm tired and we're not actually identifying what kind of tired we are, how are you supposed to fix that? Is it social fatigue? Is it emotional? Is it physical? Is it creative? Once you identify what's fatigue, you then actually have a better chance of improving it.

That's what the reason why we have an [email protected] that we recommend a lot of people do to determine which of the seven types of rest they're most efficient in so that they can actually focus their attention on the one or two that they're most deficient in. Because that fatigue, what you feel won't tell you exactly where it's from. You have to do the extra bit of discernment to think about. How did I expend energy and did I do something to actually pour energy back into that area?

Yeah, I love that. Did you say restquiz.com? That'S correct. There are going to be some people who love quizzes. They are on that. I was wanting to ask you, what are some of the ways that we think we're resting, but we're not resting at all? Yeah, one of the. There's a two big ones that I see over and over again. One is vacations. Everyone's like, oh, I'm gonna go on vacation and get some rest. And they come back, you know, a week later or whatever, and it's like, hey, do you feel more.

No, I'm more exhausted than ever. Why is that? Because the vacations are not a burnout prevention strategy. Most of us, when we go on vacations, we basically just go do fun stuff away from home. And so we are expending energy. And the energy we're expending isn't necessarily the energy to pour back into the place of deficit. It's just expending more energy that we don't have. And we're staying up late. We're doing things that are, you know, burning even more energy.

And so I think if we're going to use a vacation as a restorative process, we have to realize that you're only going to be getting restored on that every, what, three or four times a year when you take the vacation. That can't be how you solve burnout. Really. We have to incorporate these restorative practices, these restful practices throughout our days, our week and our months. That's really the concept of Sabbath, is to make sure that there's restorative practices embedded within our week.

That's. It wasn't a suggestion. It was actually a command to make sure that that was embedded into our lives. And so the second one specifically is, as it relates to these misconceptions, is this thought process of, well, it's the weekend, so I'm just going to lounge around on my sofa and watch TV and click through, you know, entire series in a weekend and veg out here, and that's wrapped rest. Sandra, how do you know us? I've been you.

That's how I know, you know, and the thing is, that could be fun for a season. But is it restful? Is it that you actually feel restored? Whenever I did that, I would wake up feeling more drained than ever. And really what that does is it just becomes escapism. It's like, I'm so exhausted, I just want to escape for a minute in somebody else's life. You know, let me watch somebody else's drama for a second and just escape into that. Or reading, you know, I'm a book nerd.

So reading a book can sometimes be that escapism. Now the reality is you can use tv, movies, books as part of creative rest, but when you do that, it's not just to escape from your life, is actually to be inspired by what you're consuming. So interesting. There's so many things I want to ask you. I definitely, you've touched on it and I definitely want to make space for it. You mentioned Jesus and rest. You mentioned the Sabbath.

When you look at the life of Jesus, when we talk a lot around here about colliding with Jesus, when you collide with him, how do you see him inviting us into rest and what does it end up actually looking like on a real practical like way. Yeah, when I look at the life of Jesus actually, you know, in Sacred Rest, I wrote the book up into two sections. The second half of the book is fully about the spirituality aspect of it.

The first half goes over a lot of what we just discussed, the seven types of rest, the science, putting it into like physical practice. But when I started kind of diving into the life of Jesus, one of the things that I loved is that, that I guess my collision point, so to speak with him is seeing how he embedded it in his ministry. Like it wasn't this extra thing he, he did on the side.

You see throughout, like if you just took one of the gospels, if you just took Matthew and just went through it throughout that entire Gospel, it is embedded throughout it. You see times when he, when he is pulling away and sleeping, you know, storm going on, I'm getting some sleep, he's doing the physical rest. We see times where he, it says, withdraws to desolate places, which is basically a sensory reprieve.

You're going to places where there's not a lot of visual input or other things and noise and stuff going on. You're silencing what's around you. We see times when, one of my favorite times as it relates to emotional and spiritual and social rest includes those times where you see him segment out his circle. He has the masses, where he's ministering to everybody.

He has the inner circle, the 12, then he has the close knit circle, that little three and four who are with them on the Mount of Transfiguration or with him in the garden. And so we, we see how he's segmented out. And I love that like even in the those two examples on the Mount of Transfiguration, this is When God reveals who he is to these. This small, small group of people, that is the highest level of emotional rest. When you.

When the people close to you know you better than everybody else, things about you are revealed in their fullness. And the same in the garden. This is where he's. He's. He's pouring out an emotion which is basically pain. Crying, you know, crying drops of blood. I mean, great, great anguish, as the word says. We see him pouring out in this way, and he in no way feels ashamed. You never see it says anything about, like, he was ashamed he was doing this.

He stood in his authenticity, his emotions, because those three were. Were his emotional and social rest circle. He deemed them safe to do that with. When you think about people who are listening to this and they want what you're inviting them into, but the idea of getting rest sounds like work. Like they'll have to cancel things or shift things or let people down. Sometimes for people who have been running so hard and they're so tired, the invitation to rest does feel like that.

It almost feels like more work to try to figure out how to create rest. What's your advice for them? Yeah, I think the thing with rest is there. There is a level of accountability that's involved. And so whenever I hear someone say, well, it's almost as if they're asking for permission to rest. Permission's already been granted. It was granted from the very foundation of the earth. So it was. It was granted from the very start.

And I feel like what's happened is we've actually not pulled away from permission simply because we've gotten into a culture that teaches us that work has more value than rest. Rest. And it is that mindset that our work ethic is what we should build up, rather than seeing that work and rest have a relationship. They collide with each other. And it. And we have to realize that it's just as important to have a rest ethic. When I'm talking to mamas, because I do a lot of women's ministry.

So when I'm talking to mamas, I oftentimes will ask them, you. You will come to me after this event at the book table, and you will tell me how exhausted you are and how you don't have time to rest and how you know it's impossible. And I asked them, is that the life you want for your son and daughter? You're teaching them everything else. Why would you not also teach them how to rest? Well, how is that now?

Although it was a command from the very beginning, how is that now less important than teaching them all of these other things? Because just to be very blunt with you, in my profession, I can't tell you how many times I see teenagers who are in the ER with me who have attempted to commit suicide with things like, I'm not perfect. I can't do it like, like my parents want. I can't show up in the way that they want me to. I can't be this or that or accomplish this or that, or keep straight A's.

And the whole time in the back of my mind or the. Some of the worst situations is where the parent comes afterwards and there's nothing more we can do. It's like we're just consoling them. And they say, like, they had it all. They were head of the football team. They were the prom king or queen. And I'm thinking to myself, and that crown became too much to carry because they never had a moment to put it down. They never had a moment where they felt that it was safe to say, this is too much.

I need to stop. I don't want to play football. I don't want to cheerlead. I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that. I just want to rest and enjoy my senior year. We have to realize that is just as important as all the other things we're teaching them. That is a good word and one that is hard to hear, but one that we all ought to consider. I definitely know. I mean, my kids are in college now, but I feel like I taught them hard work ethic.

I taught them to run hard and to play hard, but not to rest hard. I. I definitely think that's true of our family. I'm curious, and I know we could talk forever, but this is one more question before we sign off today, Sandra, which is when you rewind back to that season of time where the Lord floored you and spoke to you and invited you into rest. And then now fast forward, he's taught you so much and now he's using you to invite other people into rest.

Rest. How has your rest actually made your work better? Because you have the vantage point to now look back and go, there's a sort of connection between our work life and our rest life. Can you genuinely say, my rest has actually taken my work life and elevated it and made it better. What would you say? I absolutely can say that because, you know, when I look at the things that, that have been accomplished in my life, the, the things that's over the past 10 years. And I don't.

When I say accomplish that, the Martha in me wants to clarify that because some people will say, oh, does she mean like the number of books she's written or the number of places she's talked to or. Or whatever, you know, these quantums, numbers that we put together. I mean accomplish as in staying in alignment with God's plans and purposes for me. So that's what I mean by accomplished.

When I think about that, I realize that most of the things that I have that I have accomplished in that sense would have never occurred because I would not have been still enough to hear him. I would not have been still enough to know him, to behold him moving in certain ways, to see the places where I not just can fit in, but the places where I fit, like where he has uniquely gifted and talent me to slide right in there without resistance and without pressure.

And I think that is what I'm witnessing when people truly understand the power of resting in a biblical sense, but also in a practical, scientific sense as well. Well, you have given us so much to think about. You're inspiring me. I. Tonight when I go home, I might just say, hey, husband, let's go walk in the forest instead of watching a show. I love it. I love that.

There's so many things I'm thinking about that I think we get into kind of these habits or patterns of ways that we define rest that might not be restful. So you've given us a lot to chew on. I know that so many of us are going to want to grab your books and follow you on social and all the things. How do we do that? Yes, well, the book we're referring to is sacred. Rest, recover your life, renew your energy, restore your sanity, and you can learn more about it.

And take the free [email protected] and then my main website is I choose my best life.com and there's. I have a podcast by the same name as well. Oh, thank you so much for being with us today, Dr. Sandra. It's been my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, friend. I hope that you were inspired to rest. I know I was. Yes, I made a joke there with Dr. Sandra at the end. But truly I feel inspired to rest in ways that I haven't before. And I hope you do as well.

If you need a resource that will help you to spend time with Jesus, to be with God, to go looking for God, make sure to check out our Bible study, six Ways to Go Looking for God, it's on our store at wecollide.net and that would be a really great place to start for just some purposeful, intentional guidance in your time with the Lord. Friend, if you are tired, I want to remind you that we have a God who says, come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.

Keep colliding and we'll catch you next week.

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