Learning to Rest

The air has a warmness to it. Even under the briskness you can feel it, smell it. Spring is in the air.

It’s amazing how even after the mildest winter in my life how refreshing and exhilarating spring can feel. Filled with newness, hope, rebirth.

We got outside this weekend, a lot.

We cleared out some flower beds to allow spring to burst through unencumbered.

We ran and played.

We made art.

We took back Sunday.

We’ve been running a lot lately, even more so now that we are down to only one car, which in suburbia seems almost impossible to fathom, but we are maaging. We have been talking since Hyacynth first posted her Sabbath Experiment about taking back Sunday’s and making it a true sabbath.

It’s easier said then done!

We have been realy conscious and good about not shopping on Sunday’s for a few months now but we were starting to let other activities creep in and steal our time. All good things, fun things, but things none the less. Birthday parties! Church Events! Familiy Visits! It all leads to a feeling of running, running, running, which means we start our week already tired.

It’s hard. As we were driving home from church yesterday we were discussing all the things we needed to do, and wanted to do and how tired, oh so tired!, we were.

“You know we should just sit, rest, not do anything” my husband says.

I snort “I honestly don’t know if I know how”

“Yeah I don’t think I could do it either”

It’s not in our personality to just sit, especially when we are surrounded by the things we need and want to do. We took a baby-step yesterday. The kids played outside all afternoon. My husband and I each took over and hour and just worked on our hobby, our passion. He played his gutar and worked on a composition

I wrote, and read, and wrote some more.

When the baby woke we went outside and blew bubbles and tried to keep her from stomping on flowers.

The kids (happily) did their chore (clean up the upstairs) and then ran back outside. As a family (and with some neighbors) we started the long process of cleaning up the yard. It started slow and relaxing, just sitting in the grass watching the kids and pulling some weeds, and clearing out sticks.It built into cleaning out and cutting back the herb garden and two large sections of flower beds.

I’m finding that when I take the time to dig in, I can do just one thing at a time. It may not be sitting and relaxing, but for me, digging in the dirt, typing words on a page, organizing an area of my home is relaxing.

At the end of the day we were al dirty, tired, and toally refreshed and ready to start the week.

As spring is popping up around us and giving rebirth to the flowers we are giving rebirth to how we want to define our family and our time and I think we are on the right track.