Experimenting with Sabbath
GUEST POST:
This contribution is from Beth. That’s not her real name. Because Beth is an American working in the Middle East, she asked I refrain from using her name here. She’s a member of the Sabbath Life community, and recently we were talking about how practicing Sabbath has become a game-changer in her household. I said, “Tell me more.” And so this is what she said…
I’ve always loved the idea of Sabbath because I love rest. It’s kind of my thing. I’m really, really good at it. So Sabbath sounded great because in my mind it was all about rest. A time to disengage and do the things I love to do—reading and writing and sleeping and laying in the grass with absolutely no agenda. Of course, those things can and should be part of the Sabbath, but I was missing the bigger picture by a long shot.
It was Peter’s post about “How to Sabbath With Kids” that was the first and biggest game-changer for me in how I thought of Sabbath. I could so relate to the beginning of his post because I have small kids and my “work” in this season of life can’t stop for a whole day. My work is feeding kids and mediating sister fights and waking up whenever they need me to. So when I read that Sabbath isn’t about finding a way to get some “me time” or pushing my kids away so I could have some space, it was this totally refreshing change of mindset for me. I started reading more about Sabbath and dreaming with my husband about what it could look like for us. We’ve made a lot of changes as we’ve discovered what works and what doesn’t for our family in this season, but for now, the typical Sabbath we’ve landed at looks mostly like this:
I spend time Friday or Saturday morning getting the groceries we’ll need for the next week and getting the house as clean as I can. Saturday around 3 we start what we call “Sabbath prep.” I make something we’ll be able to eat for lunch the next day, the kids put the toys that have landed all over the house during the week in their right places, we start making dinner. We make something simple but special—steaks on the grill or something like that. I fill a carafe with red wine and put the candles on the table and usually our 4-year-old starts running around saying “Happy Sabbath!!” We turn off the internet on our phones and don’t turn it on again until the next afternoon. I put a sign we had made on the wall with the things we want to keep in our minds throughout the next 24 hours and one of us reads it aloud as we sit down to dinner. It says:
On our Sabbath we remember…
We were made to be worshippers and friends of God
That a day is coming when all will be put back in perfect order
To celebrate being invited into the in-between story and the way the Lord used our efforts this week
To lay aside fear and worry and striving and productivity
To embrace to the presence of our kids in our lives
Best of all, God is with us
And somehow, something a little magical starts to happen. The girls who a few minutes before were screaming or pulling toys out of each others’ hands suddenly feel peaceful and totally present with us while we eat. My husband and I both say something during dinner that we loved about each of the girls and about each other that week. And when we’ve finished, our 4-year-old blows out the candles and yells “Yay, God is with us!!” while our two year old pumps her fists in the air. We let them linger through bedtime rituals a little more than usual and try to soak them in a little more than we normally do. Once they’re in bed and the kitchen’s clean, we light the candles again and spend some time just enjoying the presence of the Holy Spirit with us for a while. It kind of resets us after the week and brings us back to the place of loving God’s nearness more than anything else. And then we bring the wine glasses back out with our phones put completely away and nothing we have to talk about except what we want to do in the morning.
Sunday morning we do something, hopefully outside and hopefully with friends, that all of us love to do—maybe swimming or hiking or breakfast by the water. Later while the little one naps, we play a game with our older daughter. Before we head to church we turn our internet back on our phones and realize we didn’t miss much at all.
The peacefulness in the girls almost always lasts through the day on Sunday too. I don’t know why. Maybe because they can tell they have our attention so much more fully than they do during the week. Maybe they can tell that our hearts are more peaceful because we’ve chosen to set aside the thoughts that worry us and keep us busy. Whatever the reason, it’s pretty amazing.
Choosing to try Sabbath out was one of the best decisions we’ve made, but as I sit here I’m struggling to articulate why. Of course, I love the peace that comes over all of us. I love the way it resets us week after week and reminds of what actually matters to us. I love that it gives us more space for the things we love like the outdoors and books and good food and good music. I love the way it reminds me that I wasn’t made to be busy but to walk in the cool of a garden with a God who loves me. But there’s something more that I’m pretty sure can’t completely be explained but just has to be experienced.
Everything I’ve read about Sabbath uses words like “joy” and “delight,” and I think that’s exactly what God’s inviting us into when he invites us into Sabbath. And like so many before us, it’s definitely what our family’s found in it.