Posts Tagged ‘Maggie’

by Maggie Roth

And so we reached the final Sunday in our Sabbath journey. Part of me is a little sad that the end is here but another part of me has awakened to the experience in a way I didn’t expect and leaves me extremely grateful.

The adoption of this practice has been so much more than the changing of our habits on Sunday. Though I’ve felt at times I’ve been “keeping score“ rather than enjoying the Sabbath, I know that this experience has been much more. It’s caused me to examine how much I’m willing to change and to honestly assess my faith and how I live it. One of the questions I keep running into as we’ve built our weeks around Sunday is – are we really a Christian family? What does that even mean? Could you tell our family apart from a non-Christian family? Are we actually practicing our Christian values?

I know we’re trying more now than ever before, and that’s not an easy endeavor. We live in the midst of a world where status and respectability seem to be mixed up with fancy houses and fancy clothes. I know better and can honestly say I’ve made my peace with that rat race, but I wonder if my children will. How do I help form the minds of little ones so that they know that God is so much more awesome than anything the world has to offer?

I’ve started realizing how much of our lives (food, clothing, you name it) is built around the mistreatment of others. I’m constantly stunned at how much we unwittingly affect others across the globe. To that end, I have tried to incorporate some new practices in our lives (though we have a looong way to go) and I think this Sabbath journey ties into this. Somehow, in the midst of all this awareness and all this restructuring, there is a path forming. Our family is still trying to find trail, but we’re out here, looking around, trying to figure out how to make our way through the mud.

I admitted last week that we’ve been much better about taking the commercialism out of our Sundays than we have putting God back in. It was kind of embarrassing to state that, but I have to think that honesty is the best policy in these situations. Life doesn’t always unfold in a grand mystical way. But then again I think this Lenten journey has formed a foundation that we will build upon. Mike and I have already agreed that we want to continue this beyond Easter Sunday. Perhaps not to the rigid standards we’ve been keeping, but we’ll keep the tradition going.

How I wish there were more resources available to us young families trying to figure out this messy wonderful life. Is there a United Methodist family blog?? I kinda doubt it. But, my goodness, I’d love to see one. I’d love to hear how others are muddling through also.

I had hoped that Lent would be a more meaningful experience this year than it had previously. Hands down, it has been. We are so grateful to have been challenged to make a significant change. In fact, I don’t want to monkey around with dumb sacrifices that are meaningless anymore. What does giving up sweets have to do with giving more of my life to Jesus? It seems so silly now. Lent has forever been altered in my life and I’m so glad for it! This is about concentrating on the life Jesus called us to lead and trying to follow him. To actually practice our Christianity.

So thank you, Holy Covenant, for holding us to this Lenten commitment. Thank you, God, for helping us recalibrate what it means to live a life where you are front and center rather than in the background.

And now, without further ado, let’s hear it for Easter!

by Maggie Roth

Our Lenten journey is flying by quickly and I find myself somewhat surprised that we are merely two weeks away from Easter. My heart was slightly saddened to discover that we had only two Sundays left to observe the Sabbath, which is quite silly, really. We’ve got our whole lives to observe Sabbath, should we decide to do so.

Looking back, these past two weekends were the spiritual equivalent of opposite day. I’m summarizing them together because last week I skipped a blog post (apologies, my friends), but they really could not have been more different. Two Sundays ago we went to church, ate lunch at home and generally respected all our commitments. It was nice, it was relaxing, we felt prepared to start the week. This past weekend we celebrated our son’s baptism and our daughter’s birthday with our entire family in town. There was little rest and about as much activity as one can pack into a weekend. By the time everyone left on Monday morning we were all (extended family included) deeply in need of a Sabbath. A Monday morning Sabbath.

I found myself wondering what it would be like if our families also observed this practice. Right now, we feel like oddballs, trying to push out the world and huddle together. But if others were in on the game, would we have a sense of connectedness that extends beyond our family? I fully admit I’m big on community. I love a nice big community effort. In fact, one of the reasons I love presidential addresses/state of the union speeches so much is that I love the idea that everyone (okay, not everyone, but a TON of people) are all doing the same thing, we’re all sitting and listening to what our president has to say. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that everyone is at home, trying to embrace their families and find a bit of peace each Sunday?

I still am struggling to put into words how God is working through us. Because this is a well-organized group effort, there are lots of variables and individuals involved. It can be messy. I would like to be able to say that we’ve been taking time for family prayer, but we haven’t. We have taken commercialism out of our Sundays, but haven’t been so great about putting more God back in. I’m trying not to see this as a failure and, instead, acknowledge it as a weakness. I don’t know why, but we tend to pray at dinner and discuss what we’re grateful for that day, but that’s about it. We pray individually, but the group thing feels awkward. I know that we need to work on this together moving forward. It’s a major hole that needs patching.

They say it takes many weeks and even months of meditation before you begin to feel that stirring inside you. I guess I’m starting to realize that it may take the same type of dedication to feel the stirring within us. This is a journey not a small project. I hope we can be in for the long haul.

by Maggie Roth

After a few thwarted attempts to observe the Sabbath, this past weekend allowed us to pause, regroup, and begin again. Nice how God allows us to do that. To stop in our tracks, take a deep breath, and begin once more. I love that.

Given how frustrated we were the previous weekend, we really had to shift our mindset. You see, we’d fallen into a bit of a trap. When Mike and I developed our list of things we’d avoid on Sunday (shopping, TV, internet), we set some good strong parameters. That’s a great thing. But in doing so, we also established a baseline for failure. If Mike lets our daughter watch a cartoon while we’re getting ready for church, we’ve failed the TV category. If I turn on the computer to pull down a recipe, I’ve failed in the internet category. And, not wanting to fail, I was starting to get stressed about our “infractions” and Mike was getting annoyed with the entire process. Not only was Sabbath getting to be complicated and frustrating, it was actually leaving us with a bad taste in our mouth as we went into the week.

No good.

So this weekend we decided to just wipe the slate clean and think about all the changes we made for the better and celebrate those rather than thinking we’d failed if something went awry. For instance, we haven’t spent any money at all during the last three Sundays. No engaging in the marketplace whatsoever. In addition, we’ve hardly spent any time on the internet. You cannot imagine how much time this frees up in a day. We also have had the TV on very, very little. (Truthfully, this is an easier one for us because with small children we try to not have the TV on much in general.)

I mean there’s a lot of good stuff here.

I just have to let go of my ideas of perfection and my need to control everything (talk about work!) and open my eyes to what’s really happening. This Sabbath thing has already, just in three weeks, resulted in a much calmer and more restful weekend. Mike and I are shocked by how long Sunday feels. Usually, by the time we get to church, get home, grab lunch, get kids down for naps and then run errands, the day is over in a blink – and much of the day is spent in the car. Blech. Then Sunday night we charge through laundry and take care of whatever else we need to, only to find that it’s suddenly 10 p.m. and the weekend is over already.

But now…. Now we feel rested and a bit more restored.

For us, we have to just remember that we are a family seeking intimacy and a more loving relationship with each other and with God. That’s the big picture. If we get to the end of the weekend and we can say that we are more at peace than we were on Friday, well, then we’re moving in the right direction. It doesn’t make sense to get upset about stopping and getting gas when we’re not supposed to buy anything. We’re doing the best we can and sometimes we’ll mess up or just consciously make decisions that violate the rules. But. BUT. We’re in the business of seeking peace and growing closer to God. That is our game plan. If we fix our eyes to that, we’ll be alright.

I think, fingers crossed, we’re getting closer.

by Maggie Roth

“Has it ever struck you that the trouts bite best on the Sabbath? God’s critters tempting decent men…” – Sir J.M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan)

I’d love to tell you that our family’s attempt to keep the Sabbath last weekend was an uplifting and joyous experience, which brought us closer to God and unlocked an inner spirituality we didn’t know we had. Birds started singing, the clouds parted, and rainbows sprouted from our rooftop.

But…that would be a lie. Truthfully, Sabbath was difficult for us this weekend. (I’ve been dreading even writing this post because it means public acknowledgement of our thwarted efforts.)

Last week, once again, sickness struck our household – this time my husband Mike was hit by a stomach virus. We did make it to church on Sunday morning, but by the early afternoon, Mike had quarantined himself down in the basement and I was left with the kids by myself upstairs; not so different than every day of my life as a stay-at-home mom.

But to make matters worse, Mike’s work schedule has been grueling and he had to work from home on Sunday (not Sabbath-y) while he was sick. And to make matters even worse, I caught him playing video games while he was lying on the couch (very, very un-Sabbath-y!).

It was not a good day.

You see, as a stay-at-home mom, I LIVE for the weekends. Not that I don’t love spending time with my children, but most of us parents who stay at home are desperate for adult interaction, time away from kids, and, at the very least, some help wrangling our offspring. To have to parent by myself on a weekend is an automatic ticket to frustration. Not only were we not celebrating our families and God’s presence in our life, we weren’t even getting half of a regular weekend, because Mike was wiped out and I was dealing with kids solo.

I had a bad attitude on Sunday and I fully admit that. Story of my life, I thought, as I dragged through the afternoon, chasing after two children while Mike lay on the couch downstairs. Story of my life. Sabbath ended at 6 p.m. I put the kids, ran to get Mike some medicine at Walgreens, and then went to bed with a headache.

But here’s the thing… the thing that I have to come to terms with. It IS the story of my life. Bouts of sickness are still going to hit us (after all, we live with a toddler), work will always find a way to invade our personal time, and my frustrations and anxieties will likely continue drive a wedge between me and God. Yes, of course, it’s the story of my life – it’s the story of modern life in general.

That’s why we can’t give up on keeping the Sabbath. It’s why we are going to do it better this Sunday, and take back the time that we lost this past weekend. God wants us to keep trying, even when the frustrations and worries and tedious tasks of life invade.

So that’s what we’ll do. This weekend will be our do-over. Thank you, God, for granting us do-overs every day. How lucky we are to be loved by you.

by Maggie Roth

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20: 8-11)

I remember reading a book by Anita Diamant, a Jewish author, who told of how preserving the Sabbath was an integral part of her week, how she looked forward to lighting the candles and stopping for a moment to reflect on her blessings, her struggles, and the relationships she held dear. Her words, far more beautiful than mine, touched me and I thought of them this weekend as our family began our own similar Lenten journey.

Last week, for the first time ever in my life, I preserved the seventh day — I kept Sabbath.

This small but powerful practice will repeat itself for the next six weeks, beginning every Saturday at sundown and ending the following evening. And you know what? I think I’m gonna like it. As a quick refresher, our Sabbath commitment entails joyful worship, refraining from the marketplace (i.e. buying stuff), reduced technology usage, and ceasing from work and worrying. Yep, just those little things…

I have to say, off the bat, some of it was easier than we thought it would be and some of it more difficult. Our Sabbath began on Saturday evening, we put the kids down to bed and awaited a visit from friends with whom we’d previously scheduled dinner plans. Given the need to avoid the marketplace, we ended up inviting them over for dinner instead. I served vegetable enchiladas and they brought dessert. Not a bad start. Great conversation and some much-needed catching up framed the start of our Sabbath in a wonderful way.

As our evening ended, I thought to myself that there really is something to having people over in your home, there’s some unspoken dynamic that occurs when you share a meal. I adore going to new restaurants, but all my deep abiding relationships are with folks who I would much rather share a pizza with on the floor of their condo than meeting up at the swanky new neighborhood bar. That’s where the real conversation happens, the real relationships begin.

How did our joyful worship go the next morning? Hmm… Can you hear the giant THUD of failure? I can.

Our joyful worship went kaput when, in the middle of the night, our daughter (almost three) woke up crying with a 103.3 fever. Turns out her little cold had turned into a big nasty cold and she spiked a very high fever. Motrin, cuddles, sleeping in our bed… by 5:30 a.m. you can imagine how exhausted we all were.

There would be no trip to Holy Covenant. No joyful worship for this family. Instead I ran to a quick early morning service at the local church in the suburb where we now live and returned home. This really bugged me. If we’re not worshipping as a family, what’s the point, I thought. By the end of the day I would think differently about the situation, but that was my mindset on Sunday morning.

Fortunately, the rest of our commitments were carefully planned out and arranged for ahead of time, untouched by the nasty respiratory virus that plagued our three year-old. We’d made a lot of arrangements beforehand so that we wouldn’t accidentally “mess up.” We moved our laptop out of the main area of our house; we bought bagels the day before so that we wouldn’t be tempted by Einstein’s as we walked out of church. I even did a bit of laundry so that I wouldn’t get caught without some kid items that I knew I’d need that day. With all those things in place, we were free to just be.

I wondered throughout the weekend what it would be like to be an Orthodox Jew, making arrangements each week in order to keep Sabbath. This is just a few weeks for us and we’re not nearly as strict as an Orthodox family. I recently read that Jewish migration patterns in suburbs are so distinct because families like to live within one mile of their synagogue. Why? No driving on the Sabbath. Now that’s a spiritual discipline. If we were to keep this up year-round, how would we change our life patterns to accommodate Sabbath? Would it affect our entire week? Our entire outlook? I can see how truly adopting a practice can change your attitudes toward faith. It requires something of you, time, energy, logistics and planning. How many of us do that? Sure, we get out of bed on Sunday and head to church, but is that sacrificial?

Anyway, back our Sabbath. Given our little one’s illness, our day was spent at home, just hanging out with one another. We played, we ate, we talked, and found ourselves with oodles and gobs of time together. Sundays typically go by so fast. We were amazed at how many hours in the day there are when you aren’t killing time on the internet or running errands. Sunday lasted forever!

It occurred to me that night that if we hadn’t already dedicated the day to keeping the Sabbath, we would have probably been really frustrated by our daughter’s illness. Dealing with her health would have messed up our plans, compromised our to-do list, and prevented us from feeling like we’d gotten a real day off. But somehow, because we’d already dedicated ourselves to just being, it was a really peaceful way to spend the day. Sure we were watching her like hawk and trying to get her to rest, but it didn’t matter. We were at home, we were with each other. We were wearing a more spiritual attitude already and so taking care of her was far less frustrating because we knew we were right where we were supposed to be. Home.

I guess the real question though, the deeper and more spiritual matter at hand, is whether or not we felt closer to God. Mike and I both discussed this Sunday night and came to the conclusion that we can’t honestly say we feel the spirit moving within us anymore than we had the previous weekend. Not yet anyway. But, we felt much more space in our lives. Space for each other. By the end of this journey we may feel the frustrations of not being able to use technology or not buying something we need, but right now we are just more fully aware of the extent to which we cloud our lives up.

Sabbath was less cloudy this week. We’re looking forward to the next one.

by Maggie Roth

I’m going to say it right now… I haven’t always been very good at Lent. Not that I cheated on my promises to avoid chocolate or magazines or whatever oddball selection I’ve chosen in previous years (okay, I probably did), but what I mean is that I’ve never had a significant spiritual experience accompanying my Lent sacrifices. Never in the many years that I’ve done this. Not once.

It feels a little weird to admit that.

Have you ever “cheated” on your Lent sacrifice? Do you really feel closer to God each year? I wonder if others are “better” at Lent than I am. More devout. More focused. In fact, maybe someone else should be writing this blog entry.

Regardless, this year I’ve been asked not to simply drop a random attachment to sugar or TV, but instead, to commit to a spiritual practice. Indeed, this will be an entirely different Lent experience. As I looked over the list of sample practices, I felt drawn to one that my family and I could incorporate into our lives: “keeping the Sabbath.”

Just reading the word “Sabbath” got me wondering – what does Sabbath really mean to me? The first thing that pops into my mind is, of course, a day of rest. A change in our daily routine. According to the infallible Wikipedia, the term “Sabbath” derives from the Hebrew word “shabbat,” meaning “to cease.” Truthfully, my Sabbath is hardly ever restful, and there is very little ceasing. It’s full of laundry, dishes, grocery store runs, email checking. In fact, aside from church attendance, there’s not much rest going on around here.

As my husband and I sat discussing what our Sabbath-keeping parameters might be, we first agreed to honor the Jewish tradition that dictates our Sabbath will begin at sundown and last until the following night. After a little research, we realized that observing the Sabbath really focuses on a new way of worship (i.e. ceasing and resting), whereby we free ourselves from what entraps us, thus opening us up to a more intimate experience with God. In biblical times, entrapment meant something entirely different, but we are still very much trapped in the endless cycles of work, technology, commercialism. All that fancy shiny stuff.

In order to truly observe Sabbath, we’ll have to cease from all this activity, and so we’re going to… wait for it… attempt not to buy anything, and refrain from participating in the marketplace. Gulp! In addition, we’re going to try to drastically reduce technology exposure. This one will be tricky and we’ll have to work our way through it. Ceasing from worrying is yet another suggestion we’ve been provided with and I will tell you right now this may prove to be the very most difficult challenge for me. I’m a classic worrier. Huge. And, of course, resting from work. Grocery store runs will have to wait until Monday, writing this blog post will have to wait also. We’ll replace work with enjoyable activities, things that help us celebrate our family and our relationship with our community.

Of course, all of these rules will be nothing more than a sociological experiment if we don’t also focus on the meaning of Lent. God, of course, is with us in this great caper, waiting for us to throw off the layers of distraction and listen for His voice, feel His presence, know Him more deeply. This is the part that has me worried. I can follow the rules, I’m that kinda person. But will I feel God’s presence more if I do this?

I pray this is the case. Oh, Lent, please don’t stymie me this year.