Sabbath as an Embodied Response to Leadership Trauma
Christmas Eve 2021 sits in my memory as both holy and heavy. I remember seeking to celebrate the birth of Christ with my family—candles lit, dinner on the table, a fragile quiet in the house—only hours after sitting in a hospital room where I was with someone when they died from COVID-19. I had filmed a Christmas Eve message earlier that day, my pastoral voice steady even as my soul trembled. Grief, fatigue, joy, and hope coursed together through my body. It was all there at once: incarnation and loss, light and weariness. My body felt the collision of ministry and mortality in a way that no sermon ever could.
Even though much of the world had stopped, the work of pastoral ministry went into overdrive. Adapting to new leadership styles, navigating livestream technology, and guiding our church leadership through mask mandates and safety decisions weren’t optional; they demanded constant engagement. Ministry became crisis management. At home, the same tension played out in miniature: trying to create warmth and joy for our family while juggling online school, social disconnection, and the subtle grief of a life on pause. I wanted to embody hope for others, but underneath, I was restless. Even in stillness, my soul kept working.
Reading Nicholas and Sheila Wise Rowe’s insight that “over-functioning is often a trauma response—the nervous system’s way of staying safe by staying active” felt uncomfortably familiar. I realized that’s exactly how I cope with trauma. When pain surfaces, I move faster. I lean into adrenaline and accomplishment as if productivity could protect me. The “always-on” mentality becomes my armor, useful in crisis but devastating over time. It keeps me from feeling what’s really happening. Eventually, the body starts to protest through chronic stress, fatigue, and the quiet suspicion that I’ve confused faithfulness with over-responsibility.
The Rowes describe rest as a courageous act, allowing our bodies and souls to remember that God is God and we are not. That courage, for me, begins with simply stopping. When I practice Sabbath, one of the most important rhythms is to be still. For two or three hours I sit on the couch without a plan. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I pray or write. It’s not efficient, and that’s the point. In those hours my body tells the truth my mind tries to outrun. Wendell Berry captures it perfectly:
“The mind that comes to rest is tended in ways it cannot intend.
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended by what it cannot comprehend.”
This stopping is the first movement in my Sabbath rhythm of STOP, REST, PRAY, and PLAY—an embodied retraining of the nervous system to trust grace instead of adrenaline.
Justin Whitmel Earley, in his new book writes The Body Teaches the Soul. His words remind me that healing doesn’t begin in the abstract—it starts in our actual skin and bones. We are not disembodied spirits trying to think our way to peace; we are integrated beings who heal through what we practice.
Marva Dawn echoes this truth in Keeping the Sabbath Wholly when she describes Sabbath as a time to cease, rest, embrace, and feast. The practices of embracing and feasting—touching hands, breaking bread, laughing around a table—are not extras. They are physical acts of restoration. Trauma isolates and fragments us; shared meals and friendship re-member us, stitching our humanity back together. In these embodied practices, I sense the Spirit quietly mending what hurry and over-functioning have torn apart.
In my Sabbath for Everyone doctoral project, I’ve organized Sabbath practice around four movements—STOP, REST, PRAY, and PLAY. These rhythms echo Dawn’s invitation and draw us into connection with both God and one another. Each movement is deeply relational: we stop striving so we can truly see others; we rest to remember that our worth is secure; we pray to realign our desires; and we play to rediscover joy.
After the pandemic, I’ve come to see that even a global shutdown doesn’t create real rest. If anything, the forced stop of COVID merely agitated and exposed how desperate we are for a deeper rest—the kind that only God’s Spirit can give. The Sabbath movements become a pathway for that deeper renewal, an embodied practice through which the soul learns to breathe again.
In Scripture, God gives his people the Ten Commandments AFTER bringing them out of Egypt. Freedom comes first; formation follows. The commands are not rules to earn belonging but invitations to reflect God’s character—to live as His segollah, His treasured ambassadors in the world. And woven into that identity is the command to rest.
“You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”-Exodus 19:4-6
Rest is not optional—it’s the embodied reminder that we are no longer slaves to production. Sabbath tells the truth about freedom. Yet I’m not convinced we, as pastors or as churches, have really processed what we endured during the pandemic. We adapted, innovated, and survived, but have we healed? The hyper-vigilance of those years, the attachment to technology, the loss and constant change within our communities, they still hum beneath the surface.
What if Sabbath could become the space where those things begin to surface and unwind? What if instead of masking our pain with consumerism or filling our calendars with new activity, we allowed rest to reveal what needs to be restored? Sabbath might be the very environment where the Spirit helps us unpack what our bodies and souls have carried for far too long.
When Sabbath begins each week, I start to notice just how tight and tired I am. My shoulders ache, my thoughts race, and I realize how much I’ve been carrying. I can almost feel where I’ve strained against Jesus’ easy yoke. In those first quiet moments, the Holy Spirit begins a gentle kind of repair—showing me where I’ve tried to live in my own strength and inviting me back to grace.
Slowly, through silence, laughter, prayer, and presence, I begin to experience what Eugene Peterson called “the unforced rhythms of grace.” It’s not instant. Healing never is. But week after week, Sabbath becomes the place where trauma loosens its grip and love takes root again.
Sabbath isn’t just recovery from work; it’s recovery from trauma. It’s how leaders, pastors, and communities remember that we are not what we produce, and that rest is a witness to the One who holds all things together—even when we finally stop.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.”
Perhaps this is the ongoing invitation for the post-pandemic church: to let our bodies and souls keep the Sabbath instead of the score.
About the Author
Ryan Thorson
Follower of Jesus. Husband. Father. Pastor. Coach. I am passionate about helping people discover the gift of Sabbath and slow down spirituality in the context of our busy world.5 responses to “Sabbath as an Embodied Response to Leadership Trauma”
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Thanks for the tie-in with your NPO.
I am wondering about your thoughts on working the problem the other way around.
How might unresolved trauma impact one’s ability to enter Sabbath rest? Does it act as a blockage? Are there different entry points depending on which amygdala response is activated?
Ryan, your lived example of Sabbath, gives your message power similar to the power that Jesus exemplified as he lived on this earth, where he regularly took time to be in communion with God. Just listening to you talk about it over the course of the last year or so has been a gift to me in my own spiritual journey to be more intentional about taking time to rest in the Lord. For that, I thank you. I am confident that you have been sharing your insights and experience of Sabbath with your congregation. Have you noticed any differences in the congregation as a whole or in individuals who may have begun holding Sabbath more consciously?
Rev. Dr. Thorson,
Thank you for giving us a glimpse into your experience during COVID-19. I know how demanding that time was for so many pastors. It’s wild to think the outbreak was so long ago—it still feels so recent. I felt the weight of your words when you wrote, “My body felt the collision of ministry and mortality in a way that no sermon ever could.”
In practicing Sabbath after such an intense time, what has surprised you about what your soul actually needed?
Ryan,
I do think it would be amazing for a broader community to incorporate sabbath rest. It is really challenging to do it solo. What was the first step you took to incorporate sabbath rest?
Ryan! Reading your blog really gives me pause not to let up on the sabbath in my own life. I have gotten a hundred times better but still fall short on occasion. Although Sabbath is commanded, we intentionally and willfully ignore it more than many would care to admit.
How has embracing this discipline affected those around you?