The Kind of Rest You Were Made For

There are seasons where you rise, and it feels like you’ve already lost.
Your back is tight. Your neck is stiff.
You stare at the ceiling and wonder, What happened to me?

I remember those mornings as clear as day.
Still dark out, the cold air brushing against the windowpane, and me laying there, dreading the day before it had even begun.
Kacy would roll over, rubbing her neck, same spot every time. I asked her once, “Is your neck still bugging you?”
She just sighed, “Yeah. Same spot.”
We didn’t even need to say much. There was this heaviness between us — this unspoken sadness that maybe this was just life now.
We weren’t unhealthy. We weren’t doing anything “wrong.” We ate clean. We didn’t drink. We weren’t drowning in stress.
And yet every morning, we rose feeling like we were twice our age.

There was a night — one I’ll never forget — when I couldn’t take it anymore.
I got up out of bed while Kacy slept and walked barefoot across the cold floor.
I stood in the kitchen, staring out the window into the darkness, and thought, Is this just normal?
Am I broken somehow? Is this the best it’s ever going to get?

It’s a crushing thought — not just the physical pain, but the ache that maybe the life Christ calls abundant somehow slipped past you without you noticing.
And it’s right there — in that place of quiet defeat — that the King of Kings meets us.

The offer was there all along. We just didn’t know how to receive it.

One night, almost by accident, we stumbled across a documentary called The Earthing Movie.
I didn’t expect much. Maybe some pretty shots of nature. Maybe some "crunchy granola" health advice.

Kacy and I made some popcorn and sat down to watch it.
But what I heard stunned me.
A man named Clint Ober started talking about how we are electrical beings — how the earth carries a natural, healing charge we were meant to be connected to.
But now? Shoes, floors, beds — all insulation.
Disconnected.

He shared story after story of people grounding themselves at night — touching the earth or using grounding sheets — and finding pain gone, sleep restored, lives changed.

I looked over at Kacy.
She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Do we try it?”
I said, “Honestly… why not?”

When 67% of adults around the world report having sleep disturbances every night…
When chronic sleep deprivation is linked to the same early death risk as smoking…
When whole generations are glorifying hustle and late nights without realizing it's killing them...
I figured — what did we have to lose?

The next day, I drove down to the hardware store, feeling half ridiculous.
I grabbed a spool of copper wire and a roll of foil tape, holding it in my hand at checkout thinking, This is either genius or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

That night, I rigged up a little grounding strip at the foot of our bed.
Just some foil taped across the sheet, with the copper wire running out the window into the dirt.
Kacy smirked and said, “Alright, scientist.”
I smiled and said, “Let’s just try it one night.”

We crawled into bed. No expectations.
And when the rising came — it wasn’t darkness anymore.

I opened my eyes, and the light was peeking through the window.
My body felt loose. Rested. Like I’d been poured out like warm water instead of crushed under a stone.
I turned my head, expecting the usual ache — and felt nothing but ease.

Kacy was already awake, lying still, staring at the ceiling.
She turned to me and whispered, “That was the best sleep I’ve had in… I don’t even know how long.”

We didn’t even speak for a while.
Just laid there in awe.
Because when you’ve spent so long believing exhaustion is normal — waking up whole feels like a miracle.

Peace isn’t just an idea.
It’s an experience.
It’s the breath in your lungs when you realize you’re not broken after all. You were just disconnected from the Source of all things.

That one night changed everything.

We kept grounding.
Every night.
And it kept working.
It was like layers of pain and tension we didn’t even realize we were carrying just melted away.

But the Lord didn’t stop there.
He opened our eyes wider.
We started asking, What else is quietly stealing our rest?

We swapped out harsh LED lights for warm, golden incandescents.
We wore red light glasses after sunset.
We unplugged our WiFi at night.
Moved our phones out of the bedroom.
Started eating dinner earlier.
Turned our evenings into slow descents instead of frantic sprint finishes.

We even got rid of our thick mattress and pillows eventually — letting our bodies realign naturally with simple, firm surfaces.
And you know what?
It wasn’t hard.
Because when your body finally gets a taste of the rest it was made for, you never want to go back.

The old paths.
The ones laid down before technology, before convenience, before comfort replaced connection.
That’s where real rest is.

That’s when the vision for the retreat was born.

We said, What if people could experience this without spending years stumbling through research?
What if they could feel it in their own bones — that deep, gentle healing — and take it home with them?

That’s what we’re building now.
A simple, sacred space.
Grounded beds. No tech. Warm, living light. Absolute quiet.

You won’t have to do anything.
You’ll just sleep.
And when you rise — really rise — your body will know.
Your spirit will know.

And you'll remember what the Lord promised:

Not hustle.
Not pressure.
But understanding.
The understanding that you were never designed for permanent exhaustion.
You were made for life — and life more abundant through Jesus Christ.

Are you living the life Christ died to give you — or just surviving?