Welcome to the quiet chill of winter. Welcome to The Long Exhale.
As the days draw in and the air turns a bit chilly, you are invited to mirror this season and slow your pace. You are not fixing anything. You are not going to set ambitious new goals. You are not planning your next big move. You are simply going to pause and look at what you are carrying without any judgement.
This week, I want you to practice the art of doing less. Not as a strategy but as a surrender.
My body taught me a crucial lesson about surrender. Like many of you my default setting is often to push through discomfort and keep going. What I realised was that the physical aches and the deep constant fatigue I was feeling were not obstacles to overcome these were honest signs asking me to take a deep breath and exhale. How often do we silence our bodies because they interrupt our plans?
I want to challenge you to stop and listen to your own signs this week. Slowing down is not a weakness; it is a profound and necessary act of self-preservation. When we stop trying to outpace our own limits, we give ourselves permission to truly rest. Let this be the season you stop fighting your own need for pause
Your verse for this week:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
Your Prompt: The Weight Map
Open your journal to a fresh blank page. In the centre write your name.
All around it begin to map out every single thing you are currently carrying. Do not just list the heavy obvious burdens include the small quiet weights as well:
- The school lunches for the family.
- The unopened emails sitting in your inbox.
- The friend you still have not called back.
- The appointment you keep rescheduling.
- The passing comment you made last Thursday that you are still replaying in your mind. The one you should not have said.
- The lingering worry about money.
- The guilt you feel whenever you try to rest.
- The relationship that drains you. This could be any time of relationship you have it could even be your relationship with food.
Write them all down. Make it messy. Let the ink sprawl across the page until it is completely full.
Once everything is out of your head and onto the paper, take a deep breath.
Then, circle the three things that feel the heaviest. Those are the weights you will sit with as we journey through this month.
Your Action
Pick one thing from that page, you can only choose one. That is simply not yours to carry anymore. Take your pen and boldly cross it out.
Next to it write these words: “I am returning this.”
You do not have to know exactly who or where you are returning it to.
God will sort that out for you.
Your Permission
- You have permission to close your journal today without writing a single word, if that is what your spirit needs.
- You have permission to cancel something you only said “yes” to out of guilt.
- You have permission to get into bed at 8:00 PM tonight, without a single apology.
With grace,
Debbera