Our Family of Five Practices Sabbath, and You can too!
By: DayeAnn Walden
My husband and I have 3 children, ages 7, 5, and 2. To be honest we never imagined that setting aside an entire day to rest was possible. For years I viewed sabbath as an unattainable practice meant for those who seemed to have the perfect set of circumstances in life. I felt like rest could only happen after all of my work was completed and I could never seem to find a stopping point. Besides, no one else seemed to be stopping either. Looking back now I can’t imagine our lives without it! Our hope is that by sharing a bit of our story that you will see that cultivating a rhythm of rest is in fact possible.
We’ve learned that in order for us to set aside an entire day to stop, rest, and delight, it takes some planning and preparation. We rest on Sundays and so, leading up to Sunday’s we do things like meal-plan and have paper products on hand (we choose to not do dishes on sabbath which frees us up to do more enjoyable things!) Sometimes I plan for an easy crockpot meal, and we reserve the cereal stash for “Cereal Sundays”, which happens to be the kids’ favorite! We do our laundry throughout the week so that there isn’t an overflowing pile on the weekend.
We had to have discussions about what we find restful and what feels like work. What brings us delight was different for each of us. Patrick loves to nap, and I love to read. We learned neither of us find delight in cooking or cleaning or doing the dishes. And on top of that, there are 3 tiny humans we must provide for and care for; what do they need?
On Sabbath we eat donuts, go to church, and schedule almost nothing else for the rest of the day. Late naps no longer ruin our day when our schedule is flexible; and serving at church becomes far more intentional when we aren’t in a hurry to get home to get to the next thing.
When it comes to our devices we try to be intentional. Patrick doesn’t wear his Apple watch and our phones are set aside so we can eliminate the distractions and stay in the moments of delight together. When we do we’ve found that anxiety can’t creep in. We say “YES!” to all the activities with our kids- coloring, puzzles, games, bike rides, books, disc golf, a walk. Any to-do list task that comes to mind on Sunday gets bumped to Monday’s list. And you know what? I’ve learned to be OK with that!
Overall, we desire to follow God’s command to rest but if I’m honest, we also feel the overwhelming pressure to never stop; so we pray for guidance in this season of learning to rest. We pray for wisdom and patience to teach and lead our kids as we model what this looks like. We pray for a heart yearning for God above the things of this earth. We pray to surrender our own agenda and trust in His plan for us.
These are our best days; and they don’t always go to plan, and that’s ok! But, if our family of five can practice sabbath and experience all of the goodness wrapped up in it, then I know that you can too!
