Sabbath

Life is insane. I work two jobs, I sleep three and a half hours every night, and sometimes I sleep during my lunch breaks. I'm planning a wedding, I'm trying to coordinate two work schedules so my fiance and I can see each other. I'm trying to breathe.

"If you're too busy to take a day off for the Sabbath, you're forcing yourself to do too much and not following God." Paraphrased quote from K-LOVE tonight.

Doing too much. I always do too much.

I don't remember the exact wording of the quote, but I remember the feeling of being overworked, stressed out, panicked, with no end in sight of the hectic crazy. I feel it every day, with or without my Bible time, and it's really upsetting when Scott and I can't get one day to ourselves without work obligations. I always feel so much more loved, so much closer to him when we do get those days together to just be. And that quote stirred something deeper, like a promise of something better when we stopped doing too much.

And now God's request for a Sabbath makes sense. When will I learn that sometimes the easiest things to let go, like one devoted day, are the ones that make or break a person?

It's not that He wants us lazy, but He wants us to just rest in his grace and love and to spend time with Him and devote an entire day to enjoying life with Him. No harried checking email, no fantasy football updates, just Him and us...

And suddenly I feel kind of ashamed for missing out on my day together with Him, I prioritize work and being busy so much. And I feel like I miss out on His leadings so often because I'm so busy, I pack my days to where I get three and a half hours of sleep at night and I can't sit back and LISTEN.

"We miss out on the newest divine direction because we failed to honor the last one."

I have been stressing out over so much lately, how I'm going to handle an aspect of the wedding, how I'm going to keep working while not feeling well, how I'm going to maintain friendships if I have half an hour I can talk to people...

I learned a long time ago that money goes a lot farther after tithing. I really feel like I'm being called to tithe my time, to actually sit back and take one day to just be with God. No running around, no insane demanding schedule, just be with God. Yoga to worship music, eating fresh foods outside in the sunshine, just rest and be and read the Word for hours like I used to...

I always force myself to do too much. Sometimes I joke it's because I have something to prove. Sometimes I feel worried that if I don't work my absolute hardest, God won't help me, that He gave me two jobs because I CAN work my absolute hardest and that He expects me to WonderWoman it. But my body has started acting like it wants to fail, like it can't keep going without a very long day off. I get the feeling that we were designed to only work very long days of physical labor for six days in a row.

Saturdays are my day devoted to church. What would my life be like if that day was devoted to enjoying God's presence like I do my fiance's, and fellowship with other believers was just a bonus?