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Be Still and Know
- Annie Cerovich
- 19 hours ago
- 11 min read
Hello from March and April in France! I've decided to combine this newsletter into the past two months as it's been a bit more of a challenge to collect my thoughts. It is therefore a bit longer, but the prayers and praises sum up the heart of this newsletter.
Prayers
Finding balance and being wise as I heal from burnout
How to heal here, in a loud house with lots of ins and outs: wanting to be in a healthier mental place for camp this summer
Re-starting my thesis; praise God I now have until September to finish
Reconciliation and redemption with some relationships here
Continued prayers for the campers I had in February, that they would continue in the steps of faith they made
Wrapping up this season! I've been in Grenoble for two years now, and next year is going to look different, even if I am (hopefully) still in this area. So prayers for saying goodbye to not only these people but also this stage
Wisdom in my next steps: seeing a call and a desire to stay in France, just not sure what that looks like: with what organization, etc
Praises
How many times can I put my housemates on this list.... but I have to put them on here again. They know and seek the Lord, and therefore have spent time in His love and are so generous with showing that love
My pastor's family right down the street :)
My community here in France, but also back in the States that support me with such grace and love
My mom (she should honestly be on this list every time too). She is my cheerleader over the phone!
Seeing the Lord continue to work not only in my life, but also in the lives of others as I hear stories from what is going on in the college ministry and Younglife, even though I have stepped back to heal from burnout
All that I've learned because of having to stop and listen and exist
A little "teaser" from my letter...
"After the ski camp in February, I felt excited about this vision to come alongside and raise up disciples in France that would take their relationship with Christ and share it with others.....
....Yet the Lord had something else in mind for my next steps after camp, something sweeter and fuller and richer and deeper: He wanted me to know Him in a new way."
A turning point in my burnout healing was accepting:
I have limits
Psalm 16:6, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places..."
He knows that he put His treasure in jars of clay, and He has compassion on me, knowing how I am formed, that I am dust. (Psalm 103:14) God's power does not depend on our strength or ability, but is made clear through our weaknesses so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not us. (2 Cor 4:7-9)
I need rest
Psalm 23
Genesis 2:2-5 - God resting
God loves me right here, right now
Romans 5:8, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us..."
1 John 4:19 - I was loved first
I have seen the Lord at work in a myriad of ways the past two months, His will and plans always more complexly beautiful than those we could ever build.
The big theme of this March and April has been the Lord drawing me closer into His arms of rest, while gently undoing and uprooting lies that I have walked in for a long time. If the past few years have been like when Aslan dug the dragon scales off of Eustace Scrubb in Narnia — painful and hard, yet freeing — then this time has been, as I wrote in my journal, “like when a well-worn traveler or knight comes across a hermit’s home, peaceful and quiet, and takes time to rest and heal for the rest of her journey.” The Lord has been at work mightily in my heart and mind, and I’m so excited to share the many things He’s shown me: I hope it is encouraging to you too!
When I got back from the ski camp in February, I was physically exhausted, but spiritually refreshed and excited. As I wrote in my last letter, I was so encouraged by the team I worked with and how all our gifts functioned together. It was also at this camp that I felt my heart break for the French people. This has been a prayer for the past few years, as my journey in France so far has been blind steps of faith without a clear understanding: the precise “purpose” has been unclear, (as in, I am not with an organization or job, I am “tent making”), and yet the steps have all been in earnest and in accordance with where God has so evidently wanted me. But working with these high schoolers, seeing their genuine desire to know Jesus, hearing their struggles, seeing their vivacity and joie de vivre… oh I’d love to stay and continue working with them!
I felt excited about this vision to come alongside and raise up disciples in France that would take their relationship with Christ and share it with others, seeing how the Lord has equipped me to make disciples, such as knowing how to share the Gospel or my testimony in French.
Yet the Lord had something else in mind for my next steps after camp, something sweeter and fuller and richer and deeper: He wanted me to know Him in a new way.
The second week in March, a week after camp, I crashed. I remember doing my routine Bastille workout where I climb the stairs of an old French fort, getting to the top, and being absolutely exhausted mentally and physically. I sat on a bench for an hour and just listened to the birds, wondering why I couldn’t get myself to move. I got home and told my roommate about it, who said, “Annie, I don’t want to suggest anything that might not be true, but I think you might be going through burnout.” It all clicked— the insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, fatigue, inability to take care of myself out of exhaustion, blank mind with my thesis… thankfully I had started seeing a counselor and we put our other objectives aside to start working through burnout acceptance and recovery.
In the past six or seven weeks, I often felt “crazy” — is this actually real? I would every now and then Google, “burnout symptoms” just to verify it is, indeed, “a thing.” All I wanted to do was sit and stare at the wall. My brain could not turn off, and my body therefore could not rest. In accepting my body was burnt out (so well-named: that’s exactly what it feels like!), I started implementing initiatives to help me recover. I stopped and stepped back from everything: Younglife, the coffeeshop, the college ministry, and my thesis. I put everything off, I didn’t have a to-do list, my recurring events on Google calendar were deleted: I needed to just exist. I knew if I was going to let my body heal, I would need to actually give it the space to do so.
Recently I’ve been feeling like I’m not progressing, but in looking back on the beginning of March when I was sleeping at my pastor’s family’s house, I praise God and see His healing since then! For I was really not doing well: I was constantly exhausted, and all I could do was sleep or read books or stare at the trees and birds. I really wanted to be alone, not because I didn’t want to be around people, but because my body was asking me to please stop: I am overloaded. My desire to be alone was so that I did not have this overload of stimuli, as I just wanted to exist and sleep and rest. It was for this reason that my mom here in France, our pastor’s wife, suggested that I go to a retreat center for missionaries and pastors.
She reached out to them and the next week I was at Entrepierres in the Haute (high) Provence region.
I think I will look back on this week for years to come: it was a sweet honeymoon with my Creator and King. Entrepierres is an old French village that a missionary couple restored in the 60s, situated between to huge rock formations, (thus, “between the rocks” in French). And so I was in this isolated old village, surrounded by lavender fields and sheep and mountains. Even writing this and thinking back on it feels like a dream….
Though I was listening to my body and what it needed, eating when I was hungry, sleeping when I was tired, reading when I wanted to stop processing things, my body naturally fell into a routine, which was amazing. Almost every morning I would go for a run, then eat, then all afternoon I would hang out, sleep in the garden, read, watch the bugs in the grass and the birds in the trees. I never really looked at, or wanted to look at, my phone, except to check the time or take a picture. I never felt bored or lonely or lazy. I felt content, at peace. To suggest another Narnia image, it felt like the “wood between the worlds” in the first book, “The Magician’s Nephew”: rich and alive and calm.
My first full day at Entrepierres was when I saw just how deep my burnout was, for it was ever so refreshing to engage in the sounds of life, the birds and the breeze, instead of trying to drown them out. There was no overwhelming stimuli of city and ministry house life. I remember sitting in the garden, and just sitting there, existing. No checklist of things I needed to do or accomplish, but time in the presence of God, no "I need to ask Him for this" or "help me with this", but rather marveling in the character of God.
By my third day, I was able to let my brain process a bit more some of the "tabs" that had been open on my mental computer. (It really is the best image for a burnout: too many tabs were open and my computer crashed.)
It makes me smile when I see how Lord has been so gently pursuing my heart this year. Last fall, I wrote about this "plant of service" that is good and healthy, but whose roots have been buried in the wrong soil: my purpose and identity. The past few years, I've continued to come back to the fact that, "I am in France for God", "I am here to serve Him," (all good things!) and I've written this on post-it notes and stuck them around the room, gripping and striving and sticking my purpose to the wrong thing. As I wrestled with how God made me, this more sensitive person, I was aching in confusion as I wrestled with the fact that, wait, if my purpose is to serve then I will definitely fail. If this body and mind needs more time alone to process and reflect, then my purpose can't be to serve, because I obviously wouldn't be serving all the time... what is my purpose??
I processed this for a good 24 hours, with the Lord continuing to call me into His arms through His Creation. After a run and in speaking with my mom and some of the staff at Entrepierres, I began to fully realize and accept that my purpose is to worship and bring glory to God, that's why He made me! Creation doesn't question it's purpose, it was created to praise. And yet, the lavender fields yield a harvest, the trees provide shade... they each have a purpose. A little flower I took a picture of has just as much purpose as the mountain. I also realized that Creation invites — it's beauty and place of rest invites us in, and that is the Gospel, or at least, part of it: the Gospel is rest. No more striving, proving, fighting... rest. He leads us beside still waters... And by resting and being restored, I am a "quiet and gentle spirit", a spirit at rest, that can invite people in. And, like Creation, this is true beauty, "unfading beauty" because I am at rest. I no longer have to prove that I'm active or involved or helpful or reliable or loyal or trustworthy. I can just, exist... and I am still loved.
And God so has gently reminded me in this burnout, Annie, it's who you are, who I made you, who you are in Me, that matters. I've been so at war with myself because I've been frustrated with my supposed weaknesses in sensibility and emotion, when God made me this way with a purpose, and He loves it!
I wrote on the train down to Entrepierres, "Just because the tall and mighty mountain praises God with it's grandeur, does not mean the daisy does not also praise God with it's delicateness."
The surpassing greatness in these earthly vessels can only point to a holy God.
Praise God I was able to extend my stay, so I was at Entrepierres a full eight days.
And I felt like I spent those days with God. I would go on runs with my Father, not because I needed to be in shape or prove I was fast, but because I knew He was so happy running right there with me, watching me notice His creativity and joy in creation — the bubbling stream, bleating sheep, calling birds, craggy pines and gentle breeze. I wrote in my journal one day that my prayer as I ran would be that I would recognize the voice of my Father, and that I would seek Him, for He has been with me all along.
When I was afraid of rocks falling and lightning, though I hated myself for how I responded, He was with me. He hurt watching me hate who He made me, in high school when I was depressed and suicidal, yet He was there. He was with me in the hurts and joys of college, and He's been with me in the post-college confusion and spinning wheels of trying to win His approval. And even though, the past few years, my heart has been, as far as I can know, surrendered to Him, I had not ever fully accepted the Gospel, the Good News, the confusing news, the unimaginably gracious news, that there is nothing I can do for God. He really does not need me at all.
The Gospel, the Good News that Jesus Christ came and died for our sins so that we could be in relationship with our Father and Creator, means that we can step into His rest. I believe the Gospel is many things: freeing, humbling, overwhelming, the greatest act of love we will never understand… but the Lord has shown me that at it’s core, this good news shouts, or moreso, whispers, rest. Come away, be with Me, spend time with Me, your Maker and King. For is that not what we were made for, to rest and walk in the garden with our Father? I do not believe this means sit on our haunches and wait lazily, but rather step forward into our days after spending renewing time with our Creator.
Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46:10
What if the bedrock of our faith was quietness and contemplation, on which we built our life of service?
In Paul's first letter to Timothy, he wrote, "Pray every way you know how and for everyone you know... that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness..." Jesus was in no rush to begin his ministry, and before he even stepped into ministry, before he had done anything to "merit" or "earn" such affection, the Father showed His approval (Mark 1:11) of the Son.
Praise God for this exciting, scary, unknown next step, for I now know more deeply that I'm making it with Him, in His rest.
This area of France really reminded me of home: the dry climate, rolling hills, open country...
And a little bit of April - time with my housemates :)
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