My Sabbath

I am currently in the honeymoon stage of my relationship with the Sabbath. I like it. I mean I love it. Saturday was a one day vacation and I didn’t go anywhere warm or sit on the beach. It was amazing. Here are some things that I noticed and experienced on Saturday.

• Rest is very different than not doing anything because you are exhausted or feeling lazy. I looked around and saw my partially cleaned home, but knew that I had prepared for it. Our basic cleaning was done, and the pressure of cooking wasn’t there because there was food for us to eat already made. It felt amazing. All the preparation the day before so that I could truly bypass my chores for one day. When you work and live and play all in the same place, there is always something to do. But this day allowed me not to think about it. I could rest my mind, my body, and focus purely on my family.
• I realized how often I use my chores as an excuse to stop playing with my kids. When we are playing puppy or star wars and I want to be done, I always have something else to do to tear me away. I hate being honest about this, but its true more often than I want to admit. But on Sabbath, there are no chores, no preparing meals, so I play. It forces me to be truly present in my day. Be present with my children and invest in what they want to do. My mom always said that was apart of love, doing something the other person enjoyed even if you didn’t want to.
• Most of my day was not spiritual. It wasn’t this long prayer time where I was always reading the Bible. I did read scripture on my own and with my children, but most of the day was just living. Being together. Doing things together. But isn’t that also Spiritual? Isn’t that in the essence also just purely loving someone. Being with them and making them a priority? So I guess my day was holy, but it just felt like life.
• I LOVED not having to cook! Seriously. I really do like the cooking, but the pressure of it three times a day all the time is a bit much. I felt like a load had been lifted off me for even just a little while. That rest made my day feel like vacation.
• I loved having a break from Technology. As much as I love the internet, and I do, really, not having that expectation of being on, connecting with people, relying on it for recipes and what not, was a breath of fresh air. Kind of like how we don’t know how to exist with cell phones anymore, but when it breaks or powers out, we feel a little relief (after the panic of course). It felt good to be present in only one world, and not also in the faux world of the internet. I had to be here and only here. It showed me how much I divide my time and attention between so many things. No one ever really gets all of me. Sabbath will help that.
• It’s hard to slow down. It feels different than normal, which is probably why it’s so hard to do. We get comfortable in our rhythms and then it’s hard to do something new. To take a break day. Every week to take a break. (Don’t shake. Take a break. Hehehe) It felt very good to take time to take care of myself, my kids, our relationships and our relationship with God.
• It was easy this one week. I fully expect there to be some hard choices coming up. To move it from something fun to do and how much it benefits us, to it truly being a priority so we have to say no to something we want to do. We are trying to carve out a new rhythm and that takes time to figure out.
• I was reminded how much God desires this for us. He has it set in motion for a reason. It is there to help us and not to hurt us. To fulfill his promise of giving us life to the fullest.
• On Sunday I felt rested. It was great. I got a lot done and still didn’t even turn on my computer. I stayed more present with my kids and that was good. Sabbath will remind me every week what is important. I need that, cause frankly I have a bad memory. Oh, like, today is my grandpa’s birthday. Good. I should remember to call him.
• There are some people who were a little freaked out that we were doing this. I think a little concerned that it was going to move into being legalistic. Truly, that is not why we are doing this. First, I want my life to love the Lord and this is something that he asks from us, just like the rest of the commandments. And, we wanted time together as a family. We wanted to see what God has in store for us. Taking a Sabbath is for our benefit. Why? Well, we are going to find out.