Sabbath

It wasn't that long ago -- a year, to be precise -- that I was a working woman. I pulled long hours at the elementary school, and I didn't particularly love it. I mean, I loved teaching, and I loved the kids...I just didn't love all that it required to actually be a teacher. It meant that I was spent at night and didn't want to do anything but eat dinner and rest. It meant that my housework piled up, and I never really had the energy to do anything fun.

My working days also seemed to keep Sunday from being a day of rest. Sunday somehow became laundry/grocery/project day... and thus, I perpetuated my exhaustion. It was this vicious cycle, and I hated it.

Now that I am a stay at home mom (who works even harder than I did during my teaching days!), my work is all that housework stuff that I piled into two days on the weekends. So it's not that there's not anything to do on Sundays (there is), it's just that I can feel a lot better about not doing it.

We've tried to quite literally make Sunday a day of rest for us. The second Phoebe goes down, Michael and I get into bed and take a nap. We rest our tired bodies, even for just a half hour. I got up a little bit ago from that nap to pick up and unpack from our trip, but I felt the siren call of rest. So I grabbed Michael's laptop and jumped back into bed, where I can instead gaze upon our packed bags and piled up shoes.

And strangely, I'm okay with this.

God is so good to give us a day of worship and rest. This isn't to say that I won't wash bottles before bedtime, or put away some clothes if I feel the urge. I might even pick up a few essentials at the store in case it does in fact snow tomorrow. But the spirit of our day is worshipful and restful, and I am so thankful. What a world of difference it makes on Monday!