Time Away

Sometimes the most necessary thing you can do is step back, create distance, breathe, and refill your cup so that you can return with strength, clarity, and a heart ready to pour out again. This summer, I was blessed with the opportunity to do just that.

And yet, as much as I longed for rest, as much as my body and mind craved a pause from the relentless rhythm of Connaught, there was a knot of conflicting feelings tangled deep inside me.

When the ship sailed away at the end of the last field service, I left with a strange ache in my chest. My team, my people, were continuing the work without me. Katie, my colleague and friend, would be facing the daily challenges of Connaught alone again. Big meetings and annual reviews were looming on the horizon, and I knew my support from the other side of the world would be limited at best.

There was guilt.

Guilt that I got to step away when others didn’t.

Guilt that I could rest while she shouldered the full weight of our shared mission.

Guilt that I would be wandering through markets and mountains while Katie was in crowded wards fighting for resources.

And yet, mingled in with that guilt was another feeling, one I didn’t want to admit. Frustration. Frustration that I wasn’t staying. That I felt, in some deep corner of my heart, slightly left out. That my absence might make me less needed, less integral. I knew in my head that none of those thoughts were true, but they still knocked on the door of my heart, asking to be let in.

I had to decide what to do with them. 

Jesus met me there.

He reminded me that my worth is not measured by constant doing. That rest is not selfish, it’s obedience. That even He, stepped away from the crowds to pray, to be renewed, to draw close to the Father.

Verses like Mark 6:31 echoed in my heart: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

He showed me that this time away was not a betrayal of my calling, but a strengthening for it. That rest equips us to return with more to give, not less.

But He also used this time to humble me. To remind me of how easily I can take for granted the privilege of stepping away at all.

In Sierra Leone, most people I work alongside, nurses, cleaners, porters, doctors, don’t have that option. They work tirelessly, day after day, without the luxury of escape. Time off for them isn’t a plane ticket to another country, it’s a rare Sunday afternoon nap or a moment of laughter with family before the next shift.

And here I was, flying across Europe. Eating pastel de nata in Portugal, their sweet custard still warm from the oven. Swimming in waters so impossibly clear in Croatia that I could see the sunlight dancing on the seabed. Walking the quiet, glassy shores of Lake Bled in Slovenia. Listening to the haunting, resilient stories of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Watching the sun sink into the Adriatic in Montenegro. Standing on mountain ridges in the Albanian Alps, wind in my hair, heart full of awe.

Every step of that journey was a gift. A privilege. And one that countless people will never experience.

I was, and am, deeply grateful.

I’m learning something important: it’s okay to feel the guilt. It’s okay to acknowledge the frustration. It’s okay to admit when emotions aren’t neat or pretty. Pretending everything is fine doesn’t make me stronger, it makes me disconnected from my own humanity.

But it’s also dangerous to let myself get trapped in those negative currents. I can acknowledge the feelings without letting them pull me under. I can recognize my privilege without drowning in shame. And I can choose, every day, not to take it for granted, the chance to step away, to breathe deeply, to return renewed.

This time away reminded me that rest is a gift, not a given. And the right response to a gift is not guilt, it’s gratitude.

Gratitude that I could go.
Gratitude that I could return.

And gratitude that, even in my absence, the work God began continues, because it was never mine to carry alone .