Days when both locks stay locked are the best days.
Yesterday, I posted about small things every day you can do to incorporate some balance into your day; today we are going to go back to full days of rest. Earlier this week, I talked about whole rest days, but I focused on physical rest. I believe that psychological and spiritual rest are equally important.
Enter Sabbath.
The idea of Sabbath rest springs from the creation story where God took the proverbial six days to create the earth and all its critters and then took a day off. But Suzanne, you might be saying. I don’t really look to the Bible as an authority. Fair enough. That’s your choice to make. But there are a lot of texts I don’t consider authoritative from which I can still learn something that is practical and helpful to me, and I propose that this might be one of those situations for you, so hear me out.
I like how the story doesn’t say exactly what God did on the day of rest. Just…God rested. Certainly, it includes resting from work. I’d like to think there was an element of enjoyment as well. After all, boredom is not what comes to mind when I think “restful.” In reading around about this concept before writing this post, I discovered people certainly have detailed opinions on what it means to keep the Sabbath.
I tend to fall in the dissatisfying, vague camp of “whatever God (etc.) tells you it means.” That Sabbath would be different for different people makes sense to me. For example, as a pretty intense introvert, rest happens best when I don’t even walk out my door to get the mail. For an extrovert, however, this could be exhausting and hellish. I try to put aside 16-18 hours a week where I can be at home, taking a break from working and striving and checking things off my beloved to-do list and worrying that they aren’t getting checked off fast enough. There’s no set schedule or demands on any time or attention. I am free to do (or not do) anything that makes me happy.
That might sound like a large amount of time, but really, it’s just the waking hours of one day. If I don’t have a whole Saturday to myself, I find myself looking for hours to steal during weeknights. I definitely notice a difference when I don’t find the time. I become more irritable, less productive, and more stressed out. Not only am I more likely to miss meeting goals, I am more likely to not even try to meet them.
I take a Sabbath because I want to live, and getting stuck in survival mode isn’t living.
How do you recharge?
M. Suzanne Terry 
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