Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Matthew 11:28

Feeling "heavy laden" lately?

I bet most of you are saying "yes."

I know my life lately feels like putting together a puzzle each week, and hoping each piece will fit well into the space allotted and not interfere with the other pieces so that the whole puzzle doesn't come together. And I don't have a child at home anymore! So I can only imagine how those who have a lot of family responsibilities on top of everything else must feel.

But Jesus says, "I will give you rest."

Sounds inviting, doesn't it?

But notice what comes before.

"Come to me."

Jesus is willing to give us rest, but we must first choose to go to Him. We have to be (if you'll forgive my using an almost overused word) intentional about rest times. We have to do this if we expect to have good health over the long haul. (By health I'm referring to lots of areas of life.)

Here are some practical ways that you can on-purpose creates spots of rest in your day and week:

Carve out a quiet time. My morning quiet time has started to be very important to me. I don't always get to do it, but I'm pretty disciplined about it. I urge you to figure out a time that is at least 15 minutes where you can be with the Lord, preferably in the morning, but maybe a lunch time or evening. Just try it for even three days a week to get in the habit.

Limit digital time. Social media, email, smart phones, tablets, etc. can suck a LOT of time out of us. I'm on them a lot and I'm also discovering that there is another possible problem in that the content is often toxic--negative, arrogant, opinionated, whiny, narcissistic, etc. (Total opposite of Phil. 4:8) Control your diet of this stuff by scheduling periods in the day and/or week to abstain from digital interaction. For example, I try to use Sundays as a day to avoid email, Facebook and Google. (I allow Twitter when I'm following a NASCAR race, which is a hobby for me.) I'm getting better at a full 24 hour fast.  I think it would also be wise to schedule certain times of every day in which I don't do digital stuff. I need to think this through some more.

Lunch alone. At least one day a week, go to lunch by yourself. Find a safe park nearby and have a picnic with God. Or visit a unique coffee shop, museum, or the library. Socializing is great, but sometimes you need to breathing space to not have to be interacting with anyone, even if you are a people person.

Plan ahead for getaways, whether they be evenings out, day trips, or extended vacations. For example, my husband and I enjoy going to the local baseball or hockey games, but if we aren't intentional about it, the season whizzes by and we don't get to as many games as we'd like. So we are starting to look ahead on the season and make plans to buy more than one set of tickets at a time (if affordable, season tickets can be a good way to do this.) That way we're committed to several date nights. I've considered doing this with plays as well, and maybe start having a quarterly weekend getaway.

Make time for friends. Again, this often has to be "on-purpose" since calendars get so full. I have a small SOS group (SOS stands for several things such as Serving Our Savior) that meets once a month on a set Tuesday evening. When I suggested we take it off the calendar, two of the gals pushed back because we were so busy that they felt we should NOT avoid this time. I'm glad they did!

These are just a few days to "Come to Jesus." I urge you to develop your own. He's waiting.