I didn't work this past weekend.
At all.
For the first time in a very long time, Kristy and I took the weekend apart for ourselves. Thanks to some very willing grandparents, we had no responsibilities for our children. We chose to have no responsibilities for our work - and focused, instead on each other.
I'm not sure I can communicate fully how badly I needed that. I've long lived with the mantra that I can only be as good a pastor as I am father and husband - and all of those characteristics have been stretched in the past year.
So this weekend was just what the doctor ordered.
Slept in every morning.
Went to the movies.
Sunday morning, got up, read the paper, and, while my congregation was worshipping, I was in the middle of a three mile walk with my wife.
Not too shabby.
And as much as the weekend was good medicine for body, soul, and the marriage, I'm left a bit uneasy.
I'm back at the desk this morning, on the meeting merry-go-round, and while refreshed, I'm concerned about just when it happens that the conviction I feel not to get too out of balance again will be overwhelmed by calendar, life, the grind of routine.
To what degree is that any of that a choice? And if a choice, what control have have I to keep all in check.
That's a question to be worked on. Is there a healthy way to manage life as it comes?
You'd think so.
And I'd so much prefer that to the usual feeling, when saturated with life, that one more thing is one thing too many.
When I've been at my best self, I get that. There is the intentional practice of non-doing that makes room for the sacred. It gives the body and spirit time truly to rest.
On this side of recent re-creation, I'm all in.
I know myself well enough to know, though, that I need to work hard to protect sabbath time in each day just as I had to work to protect this past weekend.
Otherwise, I'm back to what I was in no time at all.
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