Weekends are wonderful, really. I never appreciated them fully until I started working full time. Every so often I realise that I need to jealously guard my weekends – not allow them to be filled up with meetings and social activities, no matter how pleasant or joyous or worthy they are.
It is easier to see that, of course, when you are so busy through the week that you know you’ll fall over if you don’t stop at some stage. I knew that this Saturday I had a party, followed by another party, followed by guests for dinner and I therefore decided that it would be best not to go to church on Sunday but to take a little time out to rest. And I am so glad I did.
This morning I slept in and lay in bed for ages, propped up by soft white pillows, reading and writing and reading some more. Then I took myself upstairs and made myself pancakes for breakfast and took them and a pot of tea back to bed and wrote and read some more. And finally, when I felt good and ready, I had a shower and started the day. DH and DS went to church and left me alone for a good three hours. Such bliss!
I’ve spent the rest of the day pottering around the house, washing and cleaning and sorting paper work, grocery shopping and sorting out menu plans and preparing for the week ahead. I have been very firm with myself about staying ‘in the moment’ and not reaching out into the week for the worries that are going to happen, or reaching back into the week behind and rehearsing every moment and what I could have done differently.
Everything threatened to go pear-shaped in the middle of the day when a meeting that I thought was cancelled, wasn’t, and coincided with taking DS to work, doing the grocery shopping, and Skyping my lovely sister for her birthday, but even that was overcome in peace by just doing the next right thing and being totally present wherever I was. We got there and I got all of those tasks done, and no-one else was stressed by it, and it turns out I wasn’t stressed either.
I’ve been reading a brilliant book by Lysa TerKeurst called The best yes: making wise decisions in the midst of endless demands. She talks about doing the right next thing. That even when things are wrong, we can usually see what the right next thing is for us to do. I could see that today – I knew it was right to go to the meeting, even though the rest of life crowded in on me. And it was. And it worked out. She also talks about living in the moment, embracing the mundane, looking beneath the surface of the every day and using the every day decisions for decision making practice.
It so helps to be reminded of these things occasionally and today I feel like patting myself on the back and saying, ‘well done, you got it right, for once’. Tomorrow is likely to be a completely different story. But I’ll take things one day at a time and hopefully the days will stay neatly in line and not gang up and hit me all at once.
I hope my recital of my blissful day encourages you that a blissful day for you might be just around the corner. I hope it doesn’t make you want to get in your car and drive through the snow and sleet to come and hit me hard. Hang in there! We can do this! I’m going to head off and do the ironing now. Have a blessed week!