Sabbath Report #5
The Top Three Felt Benefits Thus Far...
For the last three Sabbaths or so, what had at first felt like an forced experiment has now become almost effortless. Any intimidation has vanished, and I know now that any discomfort will be negligible and brief. I know, too, how I will fill my time—usually with some variation of journaling and church and reading, along with whatever other responsibilities make themselves necessary. I find myself looking forward to Sundays—in part because I do actually enjoy these sabbaths, and in part because of the deeply felt benefits it’s producing in my life. For the purposes of this report, I’ll confine myself to my biggest three, but please feel free to chime in below with your own!
Benefit #1: The Reset Button
Because I’ve never before made weekly rest days a regular part of my life (has anyone?), my standard pattern of productivity has tended to look like this:
1) Work until the point of collapse.
2) Collapse.
3) Repeat.
Especially for those of us with active kids and church (or other) communities, our weekends can prove busier even than our weeks.
Which is why this first benefit has absolutely bowled me over. Despite that Sundays still see me rising early and rousing the rest of the family for church, shuffling the kids here and there throughout the afternoon, and catching up on cleaning and meal planning and other miscellaneous chores—despite all of this, I now wake up Monday morning with otherwise inexplicable energy. When I sit down again to my work, I do so with the ease that only comes from having thoroughly rested, the ease which used to arrive only after a complete collapse. And this new reset energy does not vanish quickly, but instead lingers throughout the week.
Benefit #2: The Return of Spacious Time
The widening of time has also proved a historically rare feeling for me—one I’ve only been able to achieve occasionally at the tail end of a vacation. Now, however, it arrives each Sunday afternoon, particularly if I sit down with my journal and my short stack of books. Minutes begin to lengthen, to yawn and laze and stretch out their arms. I scribble and pause and scribble some more. I submerge myself in chapter after chapter, and when I come to, I find that remarkably little time has passed. I lose a round of Dutch Blitz to Silas, cut and paste a collage card alongside Alyosha, and see there is still a full hour until dinner. How is it, in a life where I’m constantly trying to squeeze out more tiny droplets of time, this one small experiment has succeeded in slowing the ever-speeding clock?
Benefit #3: The Audibility of the Inner Voice
In the spring of 2024, I stopped regularly accessing my social media accounts and deleted their apps from my phone. Though this was a significant shift, it wasn’t an intentional one. I simply came to feel vaguely bad whenever I logged onto social media and felt vaguely better when I didn’t. The longer I abstained, the clearer it became what “better” meant. Without constantly comparing everyone else’s highlight reel to the lackluster realities of my every day (a fault of the platform more than the people), I came to feel increasingly clear about who I was and what mattered to me.
It surprises me, then, that digital sabbaths still succeed in cranking up my inner-voice volume. And yet, they do. They silence external inputs long enough for me to hear my true self singing underneath it all—to learn my mind a little better, as it is now; to listen to what I’m looking for next.
Before I began this practice, I didn’t think it would make such a big difference. But of course, digital sabbaths don’t just remove screens. They begin to restore coherence. They allow us truly to rest and to recharge. To loosen up the ever-looping clock. To listen, at last, to what we’ve been trying to tell ourselves all this time.
Wanna hop in on this?
Here’s some advice on how to begin…
Pick the day you need (not want—need) your phone the least. For most people, this is Saturday or Sunday.
Ahead of time, write out a list of the analog activities you’d like to do, and complete any necessary leg work, since leg work these days often involves the Internet. (Think cross stitch patterns, song lyrics, guitar tuning, exercise circuits, etc.).
Tell those who regularly contact you that you’ll be unavailable during that time. You can also set up an automatic response on your phone to request that people call you in case of an emergency. Then turn your ringer up and leave your phone in another room.
Speaking of which, leave your phone (and your other digital devices) in another room.
Plan a posture for when you feel that knee-jerk need to distract yourself—a posture in which you feel comfortable enough to wait for your next action naturally to occur to you. Usually I like to lie on our bedroom floor with my legs up on the bed, but you can also sit near a window and watch the light move. Just plan for something to occupy yourself through the waiting—that’s when the benefits really start to pop.
I’ll be sending out my next Sabbath Report in three weeks (February 11th), but until then, I’ll still be sabbathing! Don’t forget to…
…so you can hear how it goes!
Until then, rest and radical resets,
Michelle