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TITLE: Our Radical Sabbatical By Joanne Kraft 10/01/07 |
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I know it is a bit long, but I am hoping to submit it to a magazine or two. Your time would be so appreciated.
God Bless, Joanne
www.onesoblessed.blogspot.com
Like the vast majority of Americans, I am a failure at New Years’ resolutions. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop me from straining myself every January to try and come up with something I can permanently change about my life. Once decided, this permanence usually lasts a good seven hours, however this year was going to be different for me. I actually thought of something that for the first time ever I have been faithful to. My New Years’ resolution this year was to guard my time and not to take it for granted. As my children grew bigger, my time with them grew smaller. I was watching my days fill with pick ups and drop offs. I had become a shuttle service and personal social director for these little blessings. This year I was going to make a point to treat the time God had given me as a gift. Instead of running around like a hamster in a plastic ball wondering where my time had gone, I would be the sentinel and watchman at the gates of all precious time allotted both to me and my family.
While visiting with friends this past New Years’ Eve, my girlfriend and I had some time to talk while our husbands watched a basketball game in the other room. In our conversation we commiserated with each other about all the time spent taking kids all over the place to different activities each week. Our theme was disgust in our ‘captivity of activity’. My girlfriend Kim asked me if I had made any New Years resolutions. I shared with her about a book I had been reading, which told the true story of a young mother who had terminal cancer and only six months to live. This dying woman was asked by the author, what words of wisdom she could give the Christian speaker to pass on to other women in the future. Her compelling answer, “Don’t pin your hopes on living.” Her words haunted me and I went on to share how I wanted to try and live like that. It was then that I had my epiphany! What would our year be like if we had no outside activities? Now, being the mother of four children, and a bit of a control freak, I am pretty good about saying no to many outside activities. But just the thought of not having to drive my vehicle around back and forth everyday like one of those circus clowns in a fire truck gave me goose bumps! In a matter of minutes I shared my idea with Kim and my husband. My friend loved the idea and my husband was definitely onboard. Now we just had to break the news to our children.
The next morning was New Years day. We had just finished a big breakfast and had moved to the living room for our family devotion. My husband Paul and I thought it the perfect time to share our news. As you can imagine the kids weren’t thrilled about the idea. But that there were no tears was quite encouraging for me. We told them we are taking a sabbatical, a break, an activity time-out, to have more time together as a family. For the next 12 months there would be no baseball games, no voice lessons, no soccer games, no community theatre, no Awana, or anything else that they could think of that we may have overlooked. We had no problem with the school activities such as choir or ‘The Good News Club’ (I don’t have to drive them to practices or meetings since they are after school when the children are already there). If I had to drive them to something, then it would fall into the category of outside activity and the answer would be a resounding, “No.”
We are calling this our ‘family sabbatical’. Some have said our ‘radical sabbatical’. The words ‘sabbatical year’ originate from the Bible. The Lord then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to the Lord. ‘Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord, you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. ‘Your harvests after growth you shall not reap and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not father; the land shall have a sabbatical year. Leviticus 25:1-5 The Hebrew word for ‘Sabbatical Year’ is ‘Shmita’, or year of remission. It is a year during which farmland owned by Jews has to remain uncultivated, when debts owed to individuals are forgiven and when people serving as bonded laborers were traditionally freed. It occurs every seven years and is still practiced by some Orthodox Jews in Israel today. Like the sons of Israel our family needed a years sabbath rest. Charles Spurgeon has said of the need to take a rest or sabbatical, “The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking. Repose is as needed to the mind as sleep to the body. Our days of worship (which were, in the Old Testament, Sabbaths) are our days of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day, we shall break down. Even the earth must lie fallow and have her Sabbath and so must we; hence the wisdom and compassion of our Lord, when He said to His disciples that they should go “apart into a desert place, and rest a while.”
The Webster dictionary defines a sabbatical year as; any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, for rest, to acquire new skills or training. Well if that isn’t perfect, rest from running myself ragged, to acquire new parenting skills! Now don’t get me wrong. I love a good soccer game like the rest of you. I was crushed when my daughter Meghan told me she wasn’t trying out for her high school soccer team last year. I even played myself as a teenager and humbly admit I was an exceptional player on a championship team (Is that my husband Paul I hear humming Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’?). Bowling lessons, Girl Scouts, and art classes on how to make macrame’ plant holders were also on my own personal outside activity list when I was young. But if you asked me to look back on my childhood and pick my favorite memories…being shuttled around from activity to activity every day will never be one of them. My favorite memories are of my family just hanging out at home, talking and laughing together around our dinner table and joking with each other in our family room.
Fast forward twenty five years and now my own children were sitting around joking and laughing together in our family room. We were discussing our own personal sabbath year rest. We decided that if we were going to have more time together we needed to make a point to do something special together with that time. We sat and chose something fun to do every month marking it on the calendar, we called it our ‘family day’. Like most families we have been creative in finding things to do that are cost effective to the family budget. January is our daughter Grace’s birthday month so we let her pick the first ‘Radical Sabbatical’ family activity. She is eight years old and her choice of ice skating was a winner for her, not so much for her father and I. We were sore for days afterwards but our laughter at one another stumbling and sliding on the ice will forever be etched in our memories and on our hearts. The first Saturday in February was ‘Free Museum Day’ in our area. There was such a variety of museums to go to that each one of us had our own pick. We made stops at the local art museum, the space museum, the military museum, the zoo and for our youngest we had to stop by ‘Fairytale town.’
A picnic at our local ‘Daffodil Hill’ in March was my choice. Picnics’ have been a great money-saving choice for us. I had taken the children years ago to this gardeners’ paradise, when my youngest were still in strollers. What amazing pictures I have of my children nestled amongst the daffodil blooms. I couldn’t wait to return this March. My older children writhed in pain when I told them in January to put Daffodil Hill on the list. Watching their agony, I almost faltered and told them to go ahead and erase it. But then I had a flashback of another of my favorite childhood memories. I was 16 and my parents’ drove the four of us kids in our wood paneled, nine passenger stationwagon up north to see the Redwoods. I begged them to reconsider, “Are you kidding me?!? We are driving how long in the car…to look at trees!?!” Along the way we just had to tour a lumber mill in the town of Scotia and of course how could we pass up a tour of the local fish hatchery!? I was miserable then, and it brings nothing but joy to my heart now. My sisters and brother and I still laugh about that family vacation.
The children’s dreaded family day finally arrived. We were one hour into our two hour drive to Daffodil Hill when we decided to stop for lunch. We just happened to pick a spot on a secluded mountainside. Within moments of spreading out our lunch we realized that we were smack dab in the middle of a butterfly migration route. The children laughed and squealed with delight as hundreds of butterflies fluttered by them, while their father and I sat speechless. My heart was full of gratefulness to God for giving us His unspoken stamp of approval, putting us in that sacred spot for our picnic. He had blessed our children with such joy before their family day with mom’s flowers.
Our Radical Sabbatical has taught us a lot. We have learned that you shouldn’t just do something because it is something you have always done. We have learned that it is ok to say no to things that everyone else is doing. We have learned that hanging out together as a family can often times be a lot more fun than an outside activity. We have also learned that it is hard to change old habits but that the rewards are immeasurable. If we hadn’t said no to baseball this year we would have missed a butterfly picnic.
There is a saying, ‘Good is the enemy of great.” The six of us have said no to quite a few good things this year, but in return we have experienced some great moments together. The time soon approaches…once again you will be interrogated by close friends and family with this painful inquiry; “Have you made a New Years’ resolution?” Before you answer, first ask yourself these questions. Do you go to bed at night wondering where the time in your day has gone? Do you ever dread the morning and your incredibly long to-do list that seems to only get longer? Is your family being held in captivity by your activity? What is it that is stealing your precious time and your joy? What is taking your eyes off of your blessings, and off of Jesus? What in your life needs a time-out? Before you reject the possibility of saying no to something you have always said yes to…maybe it’s time your family like ours needs to get a little radical and make a New Years’ resolution to take a family Sabbatical.
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