If you are following this blog, you may have noticed that our family’s version of sabbatical is not really about rest.  Our sabbatical is more about getting out of your comfort zone, seeing the beauty of God’s creation, and making amazing memories.  But even sabbatical adventurers sometimes need a day of rest.  One of our crew was not feeling 100% today, so we left him behind and saw just a morning’s worth of the national park we wanted to visit instead of a whole day.  Seeing him have some down time made us realize maybe we all needed a little down time.  So instead of making memories out in the wild, we made memories resting in our lovely hotel.  It wasn’t dreamy or romantic, but it was very much lifegiving.

I was thinking how hard it is for all of us to give ourselves rest.  Our weekends are often a break from the work week or school week, but we want to enjoy them so much we often overly jam pack them – with sports commitments, attending events, meeting up with friends, or just getting out and about town.  Somehow rest on the weekend feels like wasting the weekend.  Part of my own sabbatical and my parish’s sabbatical was not necessarily scheduling a bunch of naps, but about creating space outside of the normal pace of life to reconnect – with God, with one another, with ourselves.

If you are not a part of our parish’s sabbatical (although if you are local, feel free to join any of the fun events found HERE), perhaps you can make this summer about finding mini sabbatical times too.  Maybe that means making space for prayer, finding your way to a church service (either in person or online), or taking on a spiritual practice.  Maybe it means engaging in an activity that helps you connect with God in a way that you haven’t tried before.  Or maybe it means taking a deep breath and really seeing the goodness all around you.  I promise, you’ll be grateful for the energizing your “sabbatical” can create!