I’m still actively blaming winter for the unyielding tiredness that’s been upon me recently. Sleeping in, napping at weird hours, drooling on our new couch. Weariness has been the wet blanket on my back for weeks now, one that I can only hope will be discarded once the groundhog is proven correct and spring actually shows up.  Until then, I’ve decided to be nice to myself, a difficult goal for a Type-A control freak whose every day can easily devolve into a series of tasks to be accomplished rather than moments to be lived.  Self-kindness is an act of vigilance for me: not beating myself up about crappy runs and extra cupcakes and immersion in the Travel Channel.  Lingering over coffee, pulling the sheets up around my neck for five more minutes, moving at a pace that doesn’t match that of the Road Runner, not going all Tiger Mom on my own ass.

The Psalmist wrote of “moments of refreshment,” and what winter lacks in sunshine it provides in opportunity: the ability to slow down, while everyone else is huddled inside by the fire and can’t see, and be still.  To remember how it feels to stop performing, to not worry about my tan, to not participate in summer’s Parade of Flesh and Weight Comparisons.  To settle into my own skin for awhile and remember that after years of pulling and stretching and trying, it actually fits just right already.  Being at home in my own life was, for so long, an unreached destination. Now it is a point easily taken for granted, tossed aside for games of Keeping Up with the Joneses (or, God forbid, the Kardashians) if I don’t remind myself of the truth: that what really matters can’t be quantified or acquired or summarized in a status update.  It must be tended to and gazed upon and lifted up in thanksgiving.  But that’s just me–I’m not a natural at gratitude.

Growing up, the head of our household was not an Asian mother, but its close second–a conservative Republican father.  Rightly valued were the virtues of hard work and achievement, and were it not for the support of my parents I’d likely be on the reality show circuit right now, praying for a shot at the next Bachelor. I still believe in the American dream and the parts of it that are currently losing favor, like personal responsibility and tenacity to the point of discomfort.  But it’s possible I take this to extremes (like I do…oh, everything else in life).  The other night, I was discussing my work schedule with The Husband.  I explained to him that after a lifetime (twenty-something years) of schooling and studying and testing, I had worked hard enough to take a break.  It was time I settled into my place on Easy Street–as in, call me when the maid finishes up, the yard is mowed, and the dishes are put away.  You can reach me at the spa.  Every day.  While buried in them, I believed that years of three-hour biology labs and dental board exams were my ticket to a life of luxury.  Maybe some light tennis. But much like Social Security, that dream doesn’t always deliver.  There is always work to be done: dinner to be cooked, stains to be scrubbed, teeth to be filled. And only when I stop seeing it as work will my resentment abate and joy take its place. Only then will I focus less on TH’s coaster-less glass and more on the fact that he always does the dishes when I make dinner.  Or that he’s slaving away over our taxes (another asterisk-laden part of the American Dream) while I watch Samantha Brown traipse around Scotland.

The rest that I observe for myself pales in comparison to that provided for me. As TH’s role has expanded from friend to BF to life partner, my eyes have been opened to what a provider looks like–how he cares for me unfailingly and with enough of a sense of humor to put up with my metronomic moods and still want to take me to lunch.  Then there’s the one this all points to, the one whose invisible nature challenges my faith in a way I often don’t realize until he reveals it–the sense that because I can’t see what he’s doing, he must be taking it easy up there.  The fear that because he’s not submitting a monthly report, he must not really be my advocate.  Then I walk to the front of the gym that doubles as a sanctuary on Sunday and take the bread and the cup, offered by a pastor who knows my name: “Christ’s body and blood, given for Stephanie.”  And I know where my true rest will always be found.