4 Ways to Start Soaking in Life (#1: Take Back Sunday)
Is your life so busy that you never have time to enjoy it? Do you have a list of tasks that seems endless? Does Sunday night roll around and you feel like your weekend was busier than your work week? If any of these describe you, my next few articles are really going to help. I’m going to dive into four things that will allow you to start soaking in life.
Take Back Sunday
I was talking to my dad recently about Chick-fil-A’s policy of being closed on Sunday and began to wonder how much money they were losing because of this. In response, my father told me an interesting story about my grandfather, Clyde Marot. Grandpa Clyde ran a general store in Springfield, Ohio. He had survived the Great Depression and knew not to take anything for granted. That is probably why he kept the store open seven days a week. After 30 years of being open every day, he decided to give himself a little break and started closing the shop on Sundays. When he made that decision, he fully expected to lose whatever revenue came in on Sunday. But to his surprise, he did not end up losing any money. His business picked up on the other days and completely made up for Sunday. He was really happy to have that one day off every week but at the same time was kicking himself for all of the Sundays he had worked prior to that. (Just for perspective, assuming he worked 52 Sundays every year for 30 years, that was an extra 1,560 days of work. If you translate that into vacation time at a typical 5-day per week job, he lost out on 312 weeks of vacation during that span!)
Soon after that conversation, I realized that my approach to Sunday has not been that much different than Grandpa Clyde’s back when he kept the shop open. I’ve often treated Sunday like any other day and used it as a chance to catch up on everything before the work week started. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells us, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. “(Mk 2:27) When God gave us the sabbath, He told us to avoid work, not as a punishment but as a gift. It’s strange that for most of my life, the idea of not working on Sunday seemed way too restrictive. Like Grandpa Clyde, it was hard for me to believe that I could still get all of my work completed if I took a break every Sunday.
In addition to not working, God said that we should use Sunday to connect with Him. Once again, I considered the spending time with God part (ie: going to mass, praying, etc.) as something more like a punishment than a gift. As life became busier and more chaotic though, I realized that I needed some way to refresh. I began to see that the time I took to connect with God on Sunday allowed Him to recharge me in preparation for the week ahead.
A little while ago, I decided to take back my Sundays and see what would happen. I made a resolution not to do any yard-work or grocery shopping or household chores and to only do what was absolutely necessary such as preparing meals and cleaning them up afterwards.
The results have been nothing short of amazing. When I’ve woke up on Sunday mornings, I’ve had this unusual feeling of freedom. It has been so great knowing that I don’t have to accomplish anything the whole day. The only thing I can compare it to is that feeling you get when you are on a carefree beach vacation or when you’re a kid starting summer break. I’ve attended mass each of those mornings and noticed a sense of gratitude towards God that often is not present for me. I’ve been totally relaxed in church instead of feeling pressed for mass to be over. After I get home, I’ve been enjoying the free time by spending it with my family, reading a book, taking a nap, or whatever. It’s been a great time to do that fun activity that I never seem to be able to fit into my schedule.
It has definitely taken some planning ahead to make this happen. I’ve had to make it a point to get all of my job-related and household work finished prior to that day. It’s funny though because this planning ahead has made me much more efficient at getting things completed that I would normally put off until Sunday. In fact, my productivity on the days leading up to Sunday is more than making up for the work I’m not doing that day (just like my Grandpa Clyde and his store). Even though this increase in efficiency isn’t the point, I’ve found that taking off on Sunday helps me get more done the rest of the time. And similarly, I’m getting the extra bonus of having a free day every week.
My son Joe recently left for vacation and mentioned how good it felt to activate the “out of office” email. What if you could have that feeling for one day every week? I’m telling you it’s worth it. Give it a try---take back Sunday!
***For those of you who work at places that must stay open on Sunday (hospitals, police stations, fire stations, etc.), consider offering your gift of service up to God and try making one of your days off a true day of rest and relaxation.