Why Do I Feel So Restless?

I remember walking around my neighborhood in California with tunnel vision. My anxiety had spiraled to the point where all I could do was lie on the ground and walk in circles — alternating back and forth between the two — all the while getting anxious about my anxiety. Can anyone relate to this?

On a phone call with a therapist later that week, he was able to kindly and compassionately name what I was experiencing: a panic attack.

“No!” I thought. “Panic attacks look like some other physical symptom — all I was doing was freaking out!” He kindly responded and named my experience with clarity in a way that ended up being my first step out of the pit I had dug myself.

I’ll save you the details of how I got to that place — but I can sum it up like this: my interior life could not sustain my exterior commitments. I said “yes” to more than both my prayer life and level of emotional health could handle, all in the name of increasing my capacity for the sake of what I understood to be the Great Commission. I baptized my unhealthy patterns in the name of kingdom effectiveness, and the tragic result was that the very thing I was trying to build — the kingdom of God — was actually being undermined by the neglect of my own life with God, exploiting others for a misguided sense of mission, and even the lack of attention to my marriage due to my need to everything in my life to be consumed under the banner of discipleship and mission.

A few months later, after I’d quit some of the extra work I was doing, recommitting to personal healthy boundaries, and a few months of intensive therapy to dissect what interior and exterior factors had led me to the place I was in, I was feeling frustrated. Even after all of that, I still felt…restless.

I still had this nagging sense of ambition — I wanted to do more than what I was presently doing! Yet, I felt challenged by the Lord to not do more, and instead to focus only on what was essential in order to spend time cultivating my two most important relationships: with God and with my wife.

One day, on a walk, I was complaining to the Lord. “Jesus,” I said. “I’ve quit everything extra for you. I’m praying more than I ever had. Yet I still feel all of this ambition, like I want to be doing more than I am. What do I do with this ambition?”

Immediately, I felt the kindness of the Lord. I felt the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit drop like a rock into my heart, and crystal clearly I heard:

“Spend your ambition going after My heart.”

Immediately, I knew what this meant. I was being invited by God to channel my ambition into building a prayer life. I felt released by God to use my ambition to pursue the heart of God with abandon like the song sings: “How far will You let me go, how abandoned will You let me be?”

In a much deeper sense, God was speaking to me on my deepest heart level saying:

“Ryan, the only One who can satisfy your ambition is Me. No amount of performance, achievement, striving, effort, income amount, professional accomplishment, or anything else will satisfy that longing in Your heart.”

Two millennia ago, North African church father St Augustine of Hippo said essentially the same thing:

I think Augustine (as usual) has got it right. The reason we will be restless until we find our rest in God is because God made us for Himself. We were made to walk in the cool of the garden with God (Gen 3:8), and we will be hopelessly dissatisfied until we find ourselves in communion with the One who made us and knows us more than anything else.

Catholic priest Ronald Rolheiser writes:

The main thesis of Rolheiser’s work is this: “Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire…Spirituality is what we do with our unrest” (p. 5).

Jesus’s first words that he asks his disciples in the Gospel of John is “What are you looking for?” (1:38). In other words, he is inviting them to get in touch with their desire, their longing, the place within them that was ultimately made for God to dwell.

For some of us, this restlessness manifests as ambition — a desire to do, achieve, and perform in such a way that fills that aching hole in our hearts that was meant for God.

For some of us, this restlessness manifests as a desire for approval — a desire for the perfect friend or community, the perfect amount of accolades, the perfect romantic relationship, or an imaginary person who can fill the aching hole in our heart that was ultimately meant for God.

For some of us, this restlessness manifests as various appetites — desires for more food, sex, passport stamps, vacation time, or a belief that if we just made a certain dollar amount, we would be satisfied.

The pain of these unfulfilled longings can be so intense that they can drive us to anxiety, depression, or to numb the pain through detachment and dissociation — aka Netflix and a social media feed.

Friends, a prayer life begins when we can hear Jesus’s question to us “What are you looking for?” and realize that every longing in our hearts is meant to be satisfied in communion with Him. Ultimately, we are all looking for Him, yet we are caught in a cosmic conspiracy of an Enemy and a culture trying to convince us that literally anything else will satisfy.

A prayer life begins when we can see our restlessness as a gift that is meant to drive us into the arms of a Father who made us for Himself. Our restlessness is a compass that continually points us Godward.

Instead of getting frustrated by your restlessness today, instead of numbing it with one more Netflix episode or another social media feed scroll, instead of setting a new performance goal, and instead of anything else that we do to dull that ache in our heart, could you bless it? Could you channel that ache Godward? Could you thank God for the internal compass in your heart that keeps you coming back to Him again and again? Can we turn from our broken cisterns that don’t satisfy (Jeremiah 2:13) to the Living Water that promises us that if we drink from Him, we’ll never be thirsty again (John 4:14)?

Pray this today:

God, I thank you for the gift of restlessness. I thank you for the ache in my heart. I bless this restlessness, this ambition, this desire for approval, this desire for more, as a gift that is meant to point me to You. I receive it as a gift to build a prayer life. Lord, would you help me direct my desire to You?

P.S. I so appreciate your email replies. I love helping you to come alive and live in love with Jesus, and it is an honor to know that these emails can help even be a small part of that. I recently realized that some of your replies have been going to my junk folder (thank you, Joanne!) and so I do apologize if I haven’t gotten back to you. I do love connecting with you all!

P.S.S. The words ambition, appetite, and approval to name the human experience are adapted from the work of Mike Breen, especially Building a Discipling Culture and Multiplying Missional Leaders. This concept is also adapted from the work of Henri Nouwen (see In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership).