I trust that everyone is having a good week. The Lord has blessed us over and over...more than we deserve. :D Our week has been busy but productive. We did have one of our children down with a virus on Monday. She ran fever all day and got sick to her stomach once. Since she's been just fine and everyone else is fine so far.
I didn't think I was ever going to be able to sit down here and have a good time to gather my thoughts to type this out. Well, it's still not done yet so it's still to be seen. :) So how did the day of rest go? WOW! The Lord truly blesses. I can fully understand now what He was saying about the Sabbath was made for man and not man for Sabbath. I cannot tell you how many times I thought of this and how freeing this was to me.
So we did prep work of making sure laundry was good and all clothes were prepared for Saturday and Sunday. This in itself can be quite a task. The Lord blessed though and I had everything pressed and set out for Sunday. You see, I could have done this Saturday night but I would have had that stress on me to get it done, which would have added to the stress when I was resting. While in stress, rest doesn't come! I know. It's just clothes. I know. I know. I know, but I tell you I would have been thinking about it till it was done. So this was done early.
Our meals were prepared ahead or semi prepared and ready to throw in a crockpot. This was fun! It was so much fun to not be in the kitchen for hours with the usual meal prep. Still, you know what? I still leisurely went in the kitchen and made a vegetable tray and broccoli salad and IT WAS FUN! A lot of times (okay, almost all the time) I don't enjoy cooking as I am trying to just get it done so we can have something to eat. I am in too much of a rush and have too many wheels turning to enjoy cooking. The funny thing is that I have always liked cooking until the past few years. I actually enjoyed the kitchen and browsed through cookbooks! Most any other time I'd be scurrying through the cookbooks in a hurry, trying to find what I needed. Not on Saturday. I sat and enjoyed the cookbooks. It. was. so. nice.
I am sure that you'd imagine the house a wreck by Saturday evening. Besides, we had an off day, right? First of all, there's no way that I could have had a day off with the house in disarray. I would have been miserable. Still, we worked ahead and got the main living areas up to par. This really helped to relax and enjoy the day. I still casually picked up here and there. We also used paper plates and cups through out the day. WHAT A TREAT! We wrote everyone's name on their own styrofoam cup and used the same one all day. At the end of the day I had a small pile of dishes in one of the sinks. My "day of rest" went from Friday night to Saturday night. So at the end of my 24 hours (about 7pm on Saturday) I washed up the pile in the sink. The main living areas were just as clean at the end as in the beginning. :)
So, what else did I do on our day of rest? I watched our college home team's football game of which they beat the #1 team in the country. That was a blast! Normally I would have been in the kitchen, working away, or in the laundry room. Since it was a time to rest, I was able to sit and enjoy my "job" of resting. I watched the WHOLE GAME. Yes! I was able to curl my hair in hot rollers. So I had fun yelling at the TV in my hot rollers. What a sight. Ha! Our oldest was surprised that her mother yelled at the TV during the football game. She never was old enough to see me enjoy a good game. I was always doing something. Oh, I still got up during the commercials and did a little here and there. I wasn't lazy. I just had fun.
It's freeing to know what all I could have done with this time. I could have read a book, sewn a dress, crocheted, rearranged decorations in the home and so much more. You see, it's a blessing to realize that working a day ahead to get things prepared to have a day of rest has freed up the opportunity to do a lot of things I "didn't have time for" before.
If you feel like a day of rest would be beneficial for you, then try it! Plan ahead and do ahead what needs to be done. Do it ahead and reap the benefits of "time off". I am hoping to be able to do the same this weekend too. :D Now I look at getting things done for that day off. It really shines a new light on everything.
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