Wrangler Dani

I’ve been thinking about Sabbath a lot lately. The last few weeks I have been stressed, stretched thin, like “butter spread over too much bread” as Bilbo Baggins would say. I’ve made myself run harder and harder, knowing that a break would finally come but not sure when. Finally, when the break started to appear, I threw myself into “fun” with abandon: dinner out, game night, days with friends, get-togethers with people I love, church, small group, great friends and cute babies and so much laughter…

…and straight-up exhaustion.

I was so busy trying to make myself forget, rushing into the busy-ness of pleasure as eagerly as I had leaped headlong into the terror of overwork that I had ruined my own joy. So, I took a day off from everything on the Monday following that hectic weekend. I wrote a little and responded to a few emails, but other than that I just wrapped myself in rest.

I worked out. I sat on the deck in the sunshine and ate ice cream and read a book. I made myself a real, delcious, hot lunch instead of scarfing whatever food was in my reach. I took a nap, I took a walk, I watched a movie and I planned a yummy dinner for my hard-working Hubs.

And because of that day, all week I’ve felt better. We went to a meeting at church the other night and I was excitedly telling my friend a story when she stopped me mid-sentence. “Are you caffienated?” she asked.

Let’s be honest. I totally was (Hi Diet Coke! I love you!), but that’s not why I was happily yammering on for the first time in weeks. I was excited to see my friends, ready to embrace a new challenge and fully immersed in the moment because I had recently encountered rest. Not the rest that I usually engage in, the frantic sitting down in-between bites or languidly checking my email while pretending to watch TV, but actually, really, truly resting. I had taken time alone to recharge and reconnect with God and my purpose and my creativity, and so I waltzed back into the world with a spring in my step and love to go around.

It’s almost as though God knows us, and knows that if given the chance, we’ll run and scurry and fret and make ourselves miserable, too scared to take time off from our self-importance and yet too tired and overwhelmed to be of any good to anyone. So He gives us Sabbath. We took the Sabbath and made a bunch of rules about it, a list of do’s and don’ts so that we don’t have to face the reality of a day immersed in joy and rest, or the terrifying truth that the world will indeed spin without us pushing it.

I don’t think He intended it to be a rule, however comforting that may be to us. He intended it to be like a date with the person you love, so enjoyable and easy that you lose track of time, a hike into the backwoods, mesmerized by the grandeur of His creation, or just a day off, so simple and inspiring that you return to the world and have to write an abominably long blog-post about it.

I guess He really does give good gifts, doesn’t He?

Shalom.