As we roll into the weekend, I’m reflecting: What is the Sabbath?

I’m reading a great book right now, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, by Peter Scazzero. I suspect it’ll get mentioned in a few more posts, including one of its own. For now, I’m thinking about the section I’m reading about observing the Sabbath. It talks about the importance of this observance, and the need for it in our lives.

Scazzero promotes flexibility when it comes to applying his book to real life. In the case of this principle, all you have to do, he says, is take a 24-hour Sabbath one day a week. It doesn’t even matter which day.  (If you think you detect a wee bit of sarcasm in the last sentence, you’re right.)

As I read that, I found myself uncharitably thinking murderous thoughts towards him and wondering how much work his wife does so that he can enjoy the Sabbath. With his four kids, if he’s taking a Sabbath, SOMEONE is picking up the slack.

Even as I’m writing this, I feel bad that the first introduction I’m giving the book is a negative one, because reading it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me. Until I got to the Sabbath chapter.

I have great aspirations for the Sabbath. I want to rest quietly. I want to read. I want down time to reflect. I don’t want to prepare meals.

But I have seven kids.

So almost every Sabbath is an exercise in frustration.

One recent Sunday morning, I spent 45 minutes doing dishes. Just a couple of hours after we’d returned from church, the sink was completely full again, and the counter was full of dirty dishes.

Does the Sabbath mean I wait until tomorrow to clean up the kitchen, and let the pile get higher?

I’m the Chaplain’s editor for his books and blog, and I’m editing his newest book. He’s waiting for me to finish so he can move towards publishing. Once I do my part, he has to look over my edits and decide what he’ll keep and what he’ll get rid of.

But as the default parent, there is a constant stream of children (sometimes, they actually walk past the Chaplain to come and ask me a question… about their dad). This, even with the Chaplain vocally volunteering that he is  the On-Duty Parent so that I can work.

Where does the Sabbath fit into that?

I find editing relaxing, so it doesn’t feel like work.

Answering innocuous questions feels like work. But I am the one who had seven kids, and somehow I have to dig deep and parent them, even on Sundays.

There’s a lot of things I can’t take a break from. When I take a break from parenting, the kids escalate their behavior until I have to get involved again. When I try to rest, someone is always working against me. Even when everyone’s happy, they’re still pretty loud.

Is the Sabbath only for empty-nesters and people with no kids? Should the Chaplain and I pick different days of the week and work really hard on those days so that the other person could enjoy a Sabbath? That sounds like it could cause some resentment from time to time.

Despite my personal development work, I haven’t figured out to regularly stay present, let go of what I can’t control, and for goodness’ sake, to stop feeling so frustrated when the Sabbath blows up in my face, as it does every week.

This day is supposed to be relaxing! After church, we don’t have any commitments. The parents should be able to lay around on the sofa for a while in the afternoon. The kids should clear the table and put their dishes away when they’re done eating, all five times a day that they stop for a meal.

At our house, even if I do twice as much work on one day, in hopes of being caught up for the next day, it is guaranteed that something will happen that will undo everything I did – former bedwetters will regress, or “someone” will get hungry after the dishes have already been done and leave a trail of food wrappers and dirty dishes through the kitchen. We aren’t talking about perfection housekeeping here.  We are talking about not drowning in dishes and laundry.

Fortunately, on that particular day, a little cry helped, but seriously, crying on a Sunday to get a little relief from the weight of life feels a bit… pitiful.

But hey, if it works?

Later that night, my midwife swung by and took me to see the Wailin’ Jennys at The Egg. She’d been given tickets by a friend and thought to invite me to come with her and her husband.

I hadn’t had time to eat dinner, and I was pretty dried up physically and spiritually. As it turns out, the little cry I’d had earlier in frustration at the way the day was going hadn’t been enough. I started crying on the opening song, and continued intermittently until the concert was over. If you know me, you know I’m not a big cryer. Fortunately, my precious midwife had a tissue in her bag. If I’d realized what was in store, I’d have brought my own hanky.

By the end of the concert, I’d realized that for whatever nuggets of gold Scazzero’s book contains, for me, right now? Twenty-four hours of Sabbath just isn’t happening. But two hours of Sabbath was what I needed, and I got it in the dark of The Egg at a secular concert. There was a spiritual element to most of the group’s songs, and it met me where I was. It felt like an answer to prayer.

It was a reminder that when we are able to stop fighting, God can meet us where we are and fill us up with exactly what we need, whether or not we are capable of observing the Sabbath in the way that it feels like we should. He has His own methods, and they aren’t always by the book, so to speak.