The Return of Sundays

To say that there is nothing to do on any given Sunday in our house is a bit of a stretch. There are always piles of laundry and food prep. A form to sign and place in the backpack. Something to find or prep or coordinate amongst our battalion of five before the week swallows us whole and we turn into carpooling, basketball cheering, deadline chasing, zoom attending crazy people. 

You get it, it’s most likely your life, too. 

And yet, Sunday still holds its very own special space on the calendar of our week. A few years ago I got a bit peeved that things traditionally done on Saturdays (games, meetings, birthday parties) started to creep their way into Sundays. Our communal Saturdays are so overbooked that we’re now forced to push some of that to the one day a week not built for it. It feels unnatural and maybe even a little rude. Don’t make me decide between you and my Sunday, please, I beg you. 

In the last year and a bit, I started blocking Sunday off as a sacred day. Dare I say I’ve turned it back into the Day of Rest it once was? 

When I was young, it was called the sabbath, and my family attended church every week. The only problem was, it wasn’t a day of rest back then either. While I was an aspiring good Christian girl, I did secretly long to stay in pajamas and eat pancakes and squander the day with too many cartoons. Every other day of the week required we get up, eat, dress, and get somewhere on time. Sunday felt like the one day we shouldn’t have to do any of that nonsense. I honestly felt much closer to God in my pajamas, where both body and mind could unravel a bit, and I could at last feel the tingle of rest returning to my toes. 

I’m an adult now, so I have the dubious honor of calling the shots.  So, in our house, the calendar stays blank on Sunday with very, very few exceptions. 

This means I get to stay in pajamas all day and talk as little as possible. Putter. Disinfect the kitchen counters. Bake and then eat too much fresh sourdough with a fried egg, gathered from the coop while still warm from one of our hens. I get to fix that thing that’s been bothering me all week (we all have one that we tolerate for too long, and it brings more relief than expected when it’s fixed.) If I’m feeling ambitious, I cook up a big pot of something yummy for dinner and we bake a batch of cookies and defiantly indulge in our little hive, refusing to believe the weekend is already coming to a close. 

That’s my perfect Sunday. 

But let’s not stop there, because another magic happens on Sunday: I write. It’s not planned, it just happens. I even wake up early despite the option of a sleep-in, because there they are, the words niggling at my brain. 

Do you have this happen, too?

Almost as if the brain is saying, finally!! Or, por fin, as I like to say in Spanish (which is my flagging second language). Finally, you have quieted the noise enough to allow us to come through. 

And come through they do. I’m firing like rockets. Open at the top of my head with ideas, big connections, the next blog post, or a complete chunk of a manuscript that might want to be written. Perhaps a strike of genius that makes a big connection I didn’t see before. 

It feels generous. The notes app on my phone would be as thick as a phone book if I complied and printed all of my Sunday inspirations. 

Honestly, it feels like my own personal kind of church. A download directly from the source.  A moment of pause where my bed provides a cushy pew to lay belly-up before the Divine All. Speak to me, I say, and take your time. I’ve got all morning to transcribe the sermon before the holy task of the afternoon nap. Before the day folds itself into the dark and the week begins again. 

And now I shall inject the bag of frozen peas in this tale, along with a bit of irony. Dare I say I have a confession to make? (Oh, dear, I went there.) 

As I lie here this morning writing a rather holier-than-thou account of our Sundays, my foot is propped up on a pillow, and topped with a frozen bag of peas because I banged up my ankle with a fall last night. It’s a big bummer because I had a busy Sunday planned. 

I’ll say that again - I had a very busy Sunday planned with important people from sun up to sun down. Coffee with a former neighbor, a walk with a friend, my niece, and her girls for gingerbread house building. This is one of those “rare exception” Sundays. When I’m in the mood for exceptions, I go big. 

But funny enough the muse (and my sore ankle) woke me at 6:00 AM and I wrote this whole piece you’re reading about rest. And then I tried to get up and put weight on my foot. Ha! Back to bed. Canceled plans, rest you must. 

This is humoring me to no end, by the way. The outcome seems inevitable. It is Sunday after all. Rest is what we do. 

Hop in the comments about how you get rest, and/or spend your Sundays…anyone still in bed?