The Sabbath Experience ... during the holidays ... are you kidding me?

Lincoln being cute on Thanksgiving

Okay, so I'll admit a major fail on the whole 'resting on the Sabbath' part of my experiment/experience. Christmas is next month, after all! I don't know about the rest of you, but when we deck the halls, we really deck the halls!

Our tradition is to start decorating the day after Thanksgiving, and to devote the next three days (and then some) to doing just that. But first, we have to take down all the fall decorations (my favorite). I have lots of cabinet space in my basement workshop dedicated to storing them, so I spent much of Friday cleaning up the workshop, putting away the pumpkins and candles and wreaths, etc., and pulling out the assorted winter decor items stored down there. Bill went to work on decorating the outside of the house, because we decided he couldn't pass up the opportunity to put out lights in 60 degree temps! It was a gorgeous day.



Laura being equally cute

Normally, part of Friday is spent carrying all the boxes and boxes and boxes down from the attic. But we broke tradition this year and didn't do that until early Saturday afternoon. There was plenty else to do before we starting digging into boxes anyway ... like cleaning.

On Sunday, we went to Sunday School and church, and then out to lunch with the kids and grandkids. By the time we got home, it was 3:00. I ran down to Goodwill with a carload of stuff to drop off, and then did a little shopping. Sunday slipped by quickly, and as evening arrived, chaos still ensued throughout the Caye house. Boxes scattered on the floor and decorations, in no particular order, strewn across the dining room table and a bunch of other surfaces.

End result? Everything, except the family room and some of the outside, is finished. The family room will take awhile yet, since that's the room with the tree, and trees take ... well ... a long time to decorate. Such a lot of work, but the end result is lovely and we enjoy it.

Relaxing yesterday would have been very difficult, because of the mess. However, a client wanted a voice-over demo recorded, and I ignored the request (it was a Sunday, for goodness sake!). But here's the thing. I never specified which day had to be honored as the Sabbath. The important thing to me was to have a day set aside, no matter what that day happened to be. So, with that in mind, I did honor the Sabbath this week; I just did it on Thursday. Since the family came over to celebrate Thanksgiving on Wednesday, that gave me all day Thursday to simply relax and reflect on God's innumerable blessings. We started off at church for our yearly Thanksgiving service and then headed out to brunch at Totin's, a local family-owned diner. The service and food was excellent and we enjoyed a lovely conversation with Joanne Totin. Somehow (however could that happen?) this included a discussion about vinegar.

We spent the afternoon relaxing, ate leftovers for dinner and then headed to the neighbors' for dessert. It was a different Thanksgiving, but a lovely one nonetheless.

So I guess I enjoyed a Sabbath rest after all! I hope you found a moment or two to stop the busyness.

Sharing my Sabbath experience,

Hana