Learning How To Find Restoration In A Searching World
photo taken by Jake Daghe
We sat on top of Cloud’s Rest in Yosemite National Park in the early morning hours, watching the sun continue to rise over the Valley. From 9,900 feet up, my wife and I set our backpacking gear off to the side, and did the only thing someone could do in a moment like that —we sat in silence.
We were at rest. We were learning to find restoration.
We were on an 8-day backpacking trip through one of the most iconic National Parks in the United States. We were planning to hike over 50+ miles with 40lbs backpacks, including climbing Half-Dome at the end of our trip. But that morning, sitting atop Cloud’s Rest, we knew we had found the reason we had gone on the trip. In the quiet with no phones or no distractions, we felt peace.
The world is searching for peace and restoration. This search infiltrates our conversations, it influences our spending and our purchases, and it steers how we schedule our days. We want to feel restored, rested, and whole. We want to feel joyful and happy, grateful for what we have and the opportunities ahead. However, peace and restoration can be hard to find.
One way or another, we have allowed thieves of restoration to invade our daily rhythms. Those interruptions to our peace look different for each of us, but they are rooted in the same core categories that most of humanity gets caught up in: the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the cares of this world.
If we’re not careful, we can become too familiar with a life of less. We can settle into the misguided reality that restoration is a great concept but would never be available for us. When we feel that lack of restoration, we often turn to forms of distraction and avoidance. We’re quick to develop coping mechanisms to help us handle our disappointments when we feel like we’ve come up short.
No more. A life marked by restoration is available and peace can be a reality in your life and in mine.
#1: Sing out loud
Restoration comes in the big and the small. It comes in the moments of forgiveness and the moments when a soft, joyful smile breaks across our lips.
At the core of feeling restored is the confidence to be who you are, no holds barred. Restoration counters embarrassment and heightens your ability to be comfortable in your own skin.
If you want to see a fun example of what peace and restoration is like, look at the birds. Listen to how they sing, chirping without a care or concern for the world. They are content to be themselves and they sing loudly because that is what they were made to do.
As you learn to find restoration, maybe you should sing out loud too. Maybe start small in the comfort of your car or shower. No one is asking you to be the next Beyonce. But don’t be shy. Enjoy who you are and you’ll be on your way to finding rest.
#2: Walk your neighborhood
Walking helps you slow down and see. As my wife and I hiked throughout Yosemite, we spent a lot of time in silence just taking in the surroundings around us. It did us good to remember that we are really small in a really big world.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in our lives and before we know it, we are the center of our worlds. Taking a walk around your neighborhood not only provides you a chance to slow down but it also helps break you out of the routine of focusing on yourself. As you walk, see the people around you. Don’t just look, but really take it in. If you’re able to walk with someone, talk and have good conversations.
#3: Buy fresh flowers
If you want to learn to find restoration, you should buy fresh flowers weekly or as often as you can. Fresh flowers are beautiful and pleasing to the soul, but they can also serve a larger, more esoteric purpose. Flowers don’t stay fresh very long. They are quick to wilt and within days and or weeks they begin to decompose.
Let the flowers be an example to you that life is short. It is easy in the chaos of daily life to forget just how brief our time here on Earth is. We fool ourselves into thinking we have forever, and as a result, we are less at peace.
The brevity of our time here shouldn’t drive us to excess but to gratitude. Thankfulness counters busyness for the sake of achievement. If you want to be at rest, you must realize that we are not guaranteed even a single day, so the fact that you have been given many is a blessing and a wondrous gift.
#4: Avoid the freeways
Although most of culture will tell you differently, you don’t always go the quickest way. You don’t always have to merge onto the interstate of life to get to the same destination as everyone else. You don’t have to be married, homeowners with stable jobs and a kid on the way by 30. You don’t have to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. On the flip side, you also don’t have to take the interstate of laziness.
Freeways are often crowded. They are often hurried and full of people not looking around but looking ahead. When it comes to finding restoration, you’ll start to realize there is more than one path. Congestion creates pollution environmentally but also mentally and emotionally.
#5: Limit the self-help
This point is ironic because it seems to dispel the very purpose of this article. However, you’ll notice the word I used was “limit” not “eradicate” or “get rid of.”
Here’s the reason why it’s important to limit self-help if you are serious about learning how to find restoration: you physically cannot do everything the self-help community asks of you. No one in their right mind can sleep 8–10 hours, wake up at 4:30a, meditate for 30 minutes, work out for an hour, eat a healthy breakfast, journal feelings, get a few hours of writing in before work, while trying to feed two kids Whole30 meals as you simultaneously pack their vegetarian lunches and walk your mini golden doodle. Add on to that reading 50 books in a year, learning a new hobby, taking up a foreign language, or practicing a gratitude list. It’s impossible.
The greatest irony of the self-help industry is that what is meant to make you better is ultimately fed off of your guilt for never being good enough. So stop overloading your guilt and start pursuing restoration. Find a few things that work for you and limit your intake of the rest of the advice. That doesn't make the self-help advice bad advice, it’s just makes it not the right fit for you.
#6: Read great biographies
The greatest wisdom people often have to share is when they are looking back over their lives. There is a reason people always say hindsight is 20/20. If that is the case and people truly do see their past with more clarity than perhaps any other section of their lives, it makes sense to focus on seeking that perspective from people you admire.
If you want to learn about how to live well and how to find restoration in the middle of a searching world, look to the examples of the hundreds of millions of people who have come before you and who were all searching for the same thing. Some people found restoration and they have advice to share. Some people sought restoration but never found it and you can learn from them too.
Start with a popular figure in history, like Eleanor Roosevelt or Martin Luther King Jr. Go from there and explore what the voices of the past have to say about how to live well.
Restoration must be found, not earned
As my wife and I hiked the mile from our campsite to the top of Cloud’s Rest, we talked through moments in our lives when we felt most at peace. Rarely did restoration suddenly drop in our laps. Rather, we most often felt at peace when we were intentional about seeking peace out.
I am guilty of frequently thinking that if I just work hard enough, long enough, ahead enough, then I will one-day experience restoration as a result of the completed task. Then I will have earned the ability to sit back and be at rest.
Sitting atop Cloud’s Rest, I realized that thinking is flawed. Restoration cannot be earned. It is not a trophy or an accolade. It must be found and how sweet is the peace that we experience when we find life’s greatest treasure.