I’m not very good at resting. Which is something that can sound like a #humblebrag except that so much of scripture talks about rest and to not do it well shows my lack of faith in a pretty blatant way.
On Fridays, my husband keeps the Sabbath. (For most people, a Sabbath day makes more sense on a Saturday or Sunday, but in a pastor’s house those days are busy workdays. So we are thankful for quiet Fridays here.) Yesterday morning I asked my husband to help me learn to rest better, and he - in typical wise Josiah style - said he thought my problem was all internal. “Why do you feel like you can’t rest, love?”
To be honest I’m not entirely sure. There are probably cultural expectations I could blame, or the mental weight of not contributing financially to our family like I did when I was working full-time, or the practical things like laundry and dirty dishes and diaper genies that need emptied. What feels truer (and more sweeping, less romantic, and wholly embarrassing) is that I functionally think of myself as the little-g god of my life. I feel responsible for our successes and failures. I feel as though I can stave off the bad and invite only the good if I just work hard enough at this mother-and-wife-hood thing.
While I cognitively know this isn’t true, while I know all the hard work in the world doesn’t guarantee any sort of favorable outcome for anyone in my life, it’s hard to stop doing the mental math of faithfulness. I know good works don’t equal blessings from God and yet this is the place I find myself on Friday mornings when I’m feeling especially guilty about sitting on the couch doing nothing.
I said approximately none of this to my husband though. Instead I resolved (as one often does in January of a new year) to try it. Instead of running ragged trying to keep everything afloat, I will rest. I will submit to my limitations of time and effort and energy, the limitations of my body to be constantly moving, the limitations of my mind to try to work out what everyone needs and when. This practice is good and holy, I think. Even if it feels maddening and itchy to begin with. I don’t think there’s any magic in keeping the sabbath, but I do think there is wisdom in it.
And so yesterday I kept the sabbath for the first time in a long time. I read a book and watched West Wing and took a nap. I accepted the generosity of the language around sabbath in the Bible - “keep the sabbath” - because it has already been given to me as a child of God and I need only to keep it, enjoy it, enter into it. And while I did that, while I rested and embraced the limits God has wisely placed on me as a human being, the world kept turning. In fact I’m quite sure we are all better off for it because I’m entering this week with fresh, newfound energy and joy. In this keeping of the sabbath, as in all things, my Father in heaven is keeping me. Thanks be to God.
