Beside Still Waters
When I was in college, my friends gave me the nickname “Twitch” because I was always moving. My roommates said that even my feet moved in my sleep. I can’t deny their observations, and that pattern continues, even into my 40s. As many of you know, my feet experienced some challenges during the 2025–2026 school year, and I had to wear a boot on each foot for months at a time. This was hard for the girl who always moves, but the Lord has most definitely used it!
When I broke my ankle, which led to the first boot of the school year, I didn’t broadly share the story of how it happened, but it’s time to share now. In the late afternoon of the day before the first day of school in August 2025, I was going on a prayer walk through each classroom, pausing to pray for each class of students and teachers. I was struck by how many different times I saw Psalm 46:10 in classrooms in some form or another, and I even took some pictures:
After I finished praying, I gathered my belongings and a very large box that I didn’t want in the office on the first day of school. As I walked down the stairs of the school office, I could not see my feet moving beneath me. I tripped on the stairs, landed on uneven pavement, and found myself unable to move at the bottom of the stairs. When a teacher found me, I told her what happened and said that God must have wanted me to “be still,” literally and figuratively! I didn’t listen very well, though. I waited 20 minutes, hobbled to my car, drove home, and didn’t seek medical attention because I didn’t want to be “still” enough to do so, until a month later, when my ankle wasn’t healing and was getting worse.
The medical professionals I eventually visited told me to get physical therapy to address my gait and to take it slowly as I tried to move and be active again. I didn’t “have time” to do that. So, in my effort to be the opposite of still, I put too much pressure on my other foot because of my altered gait. I found myself unable to walk or run well again, back in a boot on the other foot in the spring, and wearing it beyond the last day of school.
In this season of forced stillness over the past year, I found myself fascinated by the blue heron. I see them frequently in our neighborhood and often take pictures because I cannot fathom how they are able to be perfectly still for hours at a time, sitting, waiting, watching. In my observations, I see a peaceful confidence that I admire. I’ve almost been jealous of it because I don’t know how to be that still and often avoid it because it doesn’t feel productive. Several weeks ago, I saw a blue heron in a position of complete rest, sitting sprawled out in the grass beside the still waters, enjoying the sun, with a kind of peace I craved.
Paul Tripp talks about something called a “gloryscope” when it comes to observing God’s creation:
“The glories of the physical world don’t reflect God’s glory by happenchance. No, God specifically and carefully designed the physical world to reflect him, that is, to be the gloryscope that our poorly seeing eyes so desperately need. As the technician grinds the lens of a telescope for the best clarity and magnification possible, so God fashioned his world in such a way that it would bring his glory into view.”
Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do, p. 6.
I experienced this with the blue heron, realizing that it lives a full life, experiences peace, and is fed because of its stillness. That reminded me of Psalm 23:
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul. ~Psalm 23:2-3
The Hebrew word (mᵊnûḥâ) for “still” describing the waters means “rest”. The Lord leads us to rest, and with that rest comes soul restoration.
As I am concluding my time as Head of School and entering my July sabbatical, I am asking the Lord to use that time to help me learn how to truly “be still.” I’m asking the Lord to teach me how to rest, to make me lie down in green pastures, and to lead me beside the “still waters” I clearly do not know how to find on my own.
I also know that I’m not alone in this struggle. How often can any of us say that we take personal time and space to rest, reflect, restore, and remain connected to God, others, and the created world around us?
Stillness and rest come as we remember, with hopeful confidence, that God is sovereign over every detail of our lives. He is God, and nothing we accomplish is accomplished in our own power.
In this most recent season of reflection on Psalm 23, I found myself loving the verb “makes” in verse 2. We are following God’s commands when we rest! It is for our good and His glory.
So, with gratitude for all the Lord has done over the past seven years and with hope for all He will continue to do in this next season, I am receiving His invitation to be still, to rest beside still waters, and to trust that He is God. May we, as a Redeemer School community, receive that same invitation with open hands: to rest, to be restored, and to remember with hopeful confidence that God is God, He is good, and He faithfully leads us beside still waters.
