My friend Elli highly recommended a book for me to read, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, after hearing how busy, and consequently chaotic, my life has been lately.
Now my first reaction to getting the book was, "I already have no time and now I need to devote a day to doing nothing? This isn't going to work. I need to go, go, go..."
Elli also writes a blog (which you should read:)) where she talks about her and her husband, Caleb's, attempts to have a sabbath day each week. I figured Caleb is in med school so if he's keeping a sabbath with that chaos I could at least give it a try.
Well yesterday was the day Jeremy and I dubbed our Sabbath of this week. Saturdays are great because we are recovering from a chaotic week. We already take the mornings slow, go to Starbucks and sometimes Chipotle with Luna, watch shows, etc. Usually in the afternoon we attempt a project, cook, clean, do some work while watching TV and then sometimes hang out with friends or family.
In attempts to create a day that was full of rest and rejuvenation, we cut out housework and work. We did our regular Starbucks, shopped for our fence materials, I bought two pairs of adorable shoes(!), cooked, etc. Ok so our sabbath was pretty expensive but that's another lesson to be learned.
And it was AMAZING.
There was no, "We really should be..." or "Yeah in 5 minutes, I just have to finish this email..." conversations. We were fully present, fully relaxed, and fully enjoying ourselves and our time with each other.
This morning, instead of waking up to half-finished projects around the house I woke up to one big project. I've pretty much stayed focused today, tackling some organizing before church, after church we did our grocery shopping and cleaning, Jeremy is currently putting up the fence and I am finishing work emails and distracting myself from working by writing this blog post ;).
My biggest takeaways of this practice so far is:
1) God has commanded us to have a sabbath and yet we willfully choose to disobey him and not take one. This needs to change for all of us who are Christians who don't already participate. For Jeremy and I the change started yesterday.
2) Having a day of true rest is good for me in every way. I feel rejuvenated and ready to go for the week. I thought I'd feel stressed out and behind, but I don't. Now I can focus on work on Sundays instead of trying to do 1/2 work and 1/2 fun.
3) I am learning to say no. Sunday is my work day now and I can't fit everything in that I'd usually like to, especially with church taking up 1/2 of it. But that's ok and it's the necessary sacrifice to balance it all and keep the sabbath holy.
With love from Roseville,
Paige
Now my first reaction to getting the book was, "I already have no time and now I need to devote a day to doing nothing? This isn't going to work. I need to go, go, go..."
Elli also writes a blog (which you should read:)) where she talks about her and her husband, Caleb's, attempts to have a sabbath day each week. I figured Caleb is in med school so if he's keeping a sabbath with that chaos I could at least give it a try.
Well yesterday was the day Jeremy and I dubbed our Sabbath of this week. Saturdays are great because we are recovering from a chaotic week. We already take the mornings slow, go to Starbucks and sometimes Chipotle with Luna, watch shows, etc. Usually in the afternoon we attempt a project, cook, clean, do some work while watching TV and then sometimes hang out with friends or family.
In attempts to create a day that was full of rest and rejuvenation, we cut out housework and work. We did our regular Starbucks, shopped for our fence materials, I bought two pairs of adorable shoes(!), cooked, etc. Ok so our sabbath was pretty expensive but that's another lesson to be learned.
And it was AMAZING.
There was no, "We really should be..." or "Yeah in 5 minutes, I just have to finish this email..." conversations. We were fully present, fully relaxed, and fully enjoying ourselves and our time with each other.
This morning, instead of waking up to half-finished projects around the house I woke up to one big project. I've pretty much stayed focused today, tackling some organizing before church, after church we did our grocery shopping and cleaning, Jeremy is currently putting up the fence and I am finishing work emails and distracting myself from working by writing this blog post ;).
My biggest takeaways of this practice so far is:
1) God has commanded us to have a sabbath and yet we willfully choose to disobey him and not take one. This needs to change for all of us who are Christians who don't already participate. For Jeremy and I the change started yesterday.
2) Having a day of true rest is good for me in every way. I feel rejuvenated and ready to go for the week. I thought I'd feel stressed out and behind, but I don't. Now I can focus on work on Sundays instead of trying to do 1/2 work and 1/2 fun.
3) I am learning to say no. Sunday is my work day now and I can't fit everything in that I'd usually like to, especially with church taking up 1/2 of it. But that's ok and it's the necessary sacrifice to balance it all and keep the sabbath holy.
With love from Roseville,
Paige
