Full stop: It’s scary but sacred

Photo: Bogomil Mihaylov, Unsplash.

My son is an athlete, and movement is his medicine. Movement is also his job. Whether training for his own races, helping to coach a cross country team or serving as a wellness specialist at a local retirement community, movement marks his days from beginning to end. 

So when the orthopedic doctor recommended he make a full stop, he felt the ground quake under his chronically injured foot. 

Our son has been injured for well over a year and, for good reason, has spent an exorbitant amount of time, energy and money looking for a fix. He longs for a green light and go-lane to get back in the game. 

It turns out, though, that sometimes instead of pressing on or pushing through, instead of finding fixes in order to move forward, a full stop is what we need. 

The orthopedist recommended a boot to immobilize his foot. He was OK with that, figuring he would still be able to walk with the boot and carry on with his active duties. 

This is the kid we found clambering to the top of our backyard trees the moment he got home from having had his tonsils out. The kid who, at age 3, in a full leg cast, was found leaping from stairs to the floor below. A boot? No problem. 

But then came the blow. No weight- bearing, the doctor said, not even in the boot. No standing. No walking. No running back and forth in the boot to cheer on his team. Full stop for six weeks. The pressure needs to be taken off in order to heal. 

Following those bombshell orders, the doctor asked our son about his mental health. When you immobilize an athlete, it is no small thing. Stopping, for any of us, is not for the faint of heart. 

Like my son, I resist a full stop. It’s inconvenient when all I want is to carry on. It’s terrible for my ego and terrifying to my fears. If anything, I prefer a “California stop,” in which I slow a bit but then roll on through. 

But this, dear reader, is no stop sign. No red light. This is “road closed due to repair.” 

In the lexicon of punctuation, a full stop is a period — the dot at the end of a sentence. The spot we sit upon as we wait for the next words to appear. It is a holding place, a hard place, and, as it turns out, a healing place. A place that not only the orthopedist but God would recommend: sabbaths, sabbaticals, seven-year rests. 

I ran into an old friend at our neighborhood drug store. He, his wife and five children had returned from a mission assignment. When they came home, they entered such a “period.” A period of sabbatical. My friend remarked it didn’t seem very productive. They didn’t have much to show for it. 

But as we spoke, we talked of how that period opened the soil of their souls. How the stopping gave them room to breathe. How it was repairing the fabric of their lives. How productivity and fruitfulness are often two very different things. 

“In returning and rest, you will be saved,” God’s prophet told God’s people. “In quietness and trust you will find strength. But you refused. You couldn’t sit still” (Isaiah 30:15-16a, The Voice). 

You couldn’t sit still. We are a rushing, restless, refusing people who would rather run for the hills than stop and submit to the repair of all that’s worn thin, worn down, worn away. 

When we blow past the stop signs, the red lights and the roads closed, we put ourselves and others at risk. We run roughshod over all that’s precious in God’s sight, ourselves included. 

I’ve done this. Sadly, more than once. To my very own body and to the boundaries of others. At a bare minimum, this hinders our healing. At its worst, it causes harm. I’ve learned this the hard way. 

Several years ago, I was meeting with some women in advance of speaking for an event at their church. One of them was aware of the breakdown of my body years earlier — of how it left me in constant pain, unable to walk or sometimes even stand. She remarked at the recovery of my health and then asked a question I had not considered: “Do you think your healing is related to your new practice of taking a weekly Sabbath?”

Yes, I answered, yes I do. In sitting still, you will be saved. 

God leads us to periods of rest, not as a rebuke but for restoration and repair. For ourselves and for those around us and the very soil on which we stand. 

Stopping can be scary, but it’s sacred. Take the pressure off. It’s a prescription for your healing. Full stops are how we roll.  

Jenny Gehman

Jenny Gehman is a writer and retreat speaker in Millersville, PA. Jenny writes a weekly devotional, Little Life Words, at Read More

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