EPISTLE VII: To The Ones Relearning God Outside of Survival

Dear Human Being, not Human Doing,

I know why you keep moving. I know why rest feels dangerous to you.

Maybe like me, you were raised by people who survived through labor — who were raised by people who survived through labor, and the generation before them too. People whose work ethic was their dignity. People who endured hunger, instability, displacement, grief and trauma by becoming useful before they ever became safe.

You inherited their resilience. But you also inherited their fear.

I need you to hear something from me that may take your nervous system years to believe: You do not have to collapse before you are allowed to rest.

Lately, I have been thinking about how God introduced Sabbath to a people freshly delivered from slavery. (If you’re not familiar with this bible story, check out the book of Exodus or watch The Prince of Egypt for reference.)

The Hebrews came out of Egypt after generations of forced labor, oppression, genocide, survival, and production. Their bodies had been shaped by brick-making, exhaustion, fear, and the constant demand to produce more.

That feels important to notice when you consider that one of the commandments God gives them is: rest.

Not because it was natural to them, but because it wasn’t.

Slaves do not know how to rest safely. People conditioned for survival often feel guilty when they stop moving. Their nervous systems remain tethered to urgency long after the external danger has changed.

And maybe that is why Sabbath was necessary.

Because liberation is not only leaving Egypt physically. It is learning to stop carrying Egypt inside your body.

I think many of us are still living this way spiritually and emotionally.

We fear slowing down.

We feel valuable only when useful.

We panic when we are not producing.

We confuse exhaustion with righteousness.

But God’s command to rest was never cruel. It was compassionate.

An invitation to remember: you are no longer a slave.

This weekend I stayed home from church — years ago, I would have considered this a spiritual failure.

Not because I didn’t love God or because I didn’t enjoy fellowship, but because somewhere deep in my body I learned that devotion was proven through endurance and always showing up. No matter how tired. How sick. How overwhelmed. Whether I was grieving, dysregulated, or depleted I would show up.

Rest always had to justify itself first. And I finally started to slow down enough to ask: Why?

I come from people who worked.

Migrants.

Farm workers.

Survivors.

My people are the ones whose dignity is tied to labor because labor is survival. Work means food. Work means sacrifice. Work means opportunity for the next generation. Work ethic was not merely a value in my lineage — it was an inheritance forged through poverty, displacement, racism, sacrifice and survival.

And I carry that inheritance proudly.

It distinguishes me.

It opens doors.

It taught me resilience and responsibility from a very young age.

It taught me how to endure.

But it also became a doorway to trauma. Because when your worth becomes entangled with your usefulness, rest can begin to feel morally dangerous.

As I reflected on all of this while skipping church, I remembered something my father once told me proudly: that he hoped he would die working someday. Riding a tractor or digging a trench or pulling wire. Still useful. Still productive. He vigorously pumped his bicep with a clenched fist and grinned at me.

At that time, I admired that. Afterall, Moses died at 120 years old with “eyes undimmed and vigor unabated.”

He must’ve still been working, I thought to myself.

I think part of me built my life around that proud work ethic.

Because I come from people whose labor carried dignity. People who survived through the strength of their bodies. Migrants. Workers. Providers. Endurers.

Rest was rarely available to them emotionally, financially, or psychologically — until their bodies broke down.

Work became identity. Identity was rooted in survival.

But my father did not die working or riding on a tractor.

Instead, my dad died slowly after years of dialysis, illness, depression, neglecting doctor’s orders, and physical deterioration that tormented him precisely because he could no longer work. Whenever my dad resisted resting, something tragic would happen like a work injury that would lead to amputation of part of his foot. My father simply could not enter into rest.

The callouses on his hands softened through sickness.

The man who once found meaning in usefulness had to face a debilitating stillness he was never emotionally prepared for. So he numbed himself at the very end through drinking, smoking, and toxic relationships that left him vulnerable to being robbed blind.

Eventually, a brain bleed forced dad down — and he never got up again. I do not say this without tenderness. I honor my father deeply and I mourn him almost daily.

In fact, I keep a picture of my dad taking a nap with his puppy dogs framed on my nightstand as a reminder that he’s finally truly resting.

I now recognize that constantly overriding the body and the heart has a cost. The body eventually speaks.

And now I wonder how much of his work ethic was also grief. How much of it was survival? How much of it was unresolved pain disguised as endurance?

The nervous system eventually collapses under what it was forced to carry alone. And perhaps part of my healing now is choosing a different inheritance.

Not abandoning resilience.

Not abandoning responsibility.

Not abandoning hard work.

But refusing to believe the lie that my humanity only has value when I am producing. Refusing to wait until sickness forces me to listen to my own soul. Refusing to resist God as my refuge and allowing myself to come to Jesus weary and heavy-laden.

I am learning instead that rest is not the enemy of a meaningful life.

This Sunday looked almost embarrassingly ordinary.

I watched church online instead of forcing myself into attendance. I made a giant salad filled with baby greens, red beets, kidney beans, shredded carrots, onions, tomatoes and a warm sweet potato. I drank fresh water slowly. I listened to worship music and eventually drifted into a two-hour nap with my dogs asleep beside me.

I woke up slowly.

Ate fruit.

Sat quietly with my own thoughts and God.

And somewhere inside that stillness, I realized something significant:

My nervous system is learning a new way to exist.

Not in survival.

Not in striving.

Not in performance.

Not in collapse.

But in integration.

This is the slow process of teaching both my body and soul that it no longer has to live at the pace of fear.

I am slowly unraveling the old beliefs I inherited that told me love must be earned through exhaustion.

In closing, I can’t help but release some grief and cry for my dad, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, and the version of my younger self too, as I meditate on the description of the righteous in Psalm 1: trees planted in streams of water bearing fruit in season.

In season.

Not constantly.

Not endlessly producing.

Not perpetually blooming.

Not harvesting every moment of every day.

Seasonally.

In remembrance of them, and in my abiding in Christ, I am becoming a tree that doesn’t apologize for the winter, for the barren seasons or the dormancy — because my roots are still alive beneath the surface. I am planted. I am still fruitful when there is no fruit on my branches. I am still loved when I trust God and rest.

Sabbath was not simply a command about behavior: it was an invitation to trust.

Perhaps Sabbath is not merely a spiritual discipline.

Perhaps it is part of how God teaches traumatized people they are finally safe & set free.

still unlearning Egypt,

Imelda — DUST+GLORY