Last weekend Bill installed new ceiling tiles in our basement, a chore that had been waiting for a few minutes of his time since March 2005 when I had recently broken my foot and couldn’t walk without crutches and, in a completely unrelated but maddeningly timed coincidence, the downstairs bathroom toilet overflowed through the disconnected air duct and released a filthy mess onto the playroom ceiling.
And then he installed a new faucet in the upstairs bathroom, because the old one had been dripping since time out of mind.
And he hung a shelf in the boys’ room, a shelf we had purchased at Target back when the school semester was only about a week old but that neither of us had had time to do anything with since then. Plus, he also had to buy a new drill in order to hang the shelf, and Heaven Knew when he would be able to get around to that.
The previous Saturday, Bill had spent about an hour and a half of the evening hunkered under the kitchen sink. And when he was finished, the New garbage disposal—the one that newly replaced the one that had been broken for Several Weeks—Didn’t Work. Which means two things: 1) we’ve spent money on what appears to have been an unnecessary purchase and 2) we need to hire an electrician.
Sigh.
And I had this sinking feeling, this dreadful feeling that is So Familiar, this feeling of being Overwhelmed. Because before the HopeFest, the man couldn’t possibly work on this kind of thing. And now, after the HopeFest, it feels as though we have More Time, but somehow it isn’t Much More, and there is So Much that needs to be done.
Do you, O Reader, identify At All?
It was the Lovely Rachel who said, after my first week of teaching full-time, that the weekends mean So Much More when one has a full-time job.
To that I say, Indeed.
But it is tempting, with this weekend thing, to hang all my hopes on it. All week I walk around and past the tasks that I Can’t Possibly Get To now, and all week I think, “I’ll do that on the weekend.” But this is true, too, of the school stuff, of the extra thinking/extra reading/waiting grading that I need to do. And it is, of course, true of my need to rest. Sleep, I do believe, is what I’ll get this weekend. In addition to all that schoolwork, in addition to all that housework, in addition to all that socializing I have missed, in addition to more time with my family.
And then Saturday night comes, and there is more housework I could do, and there is more schoolwork I could do, and look! the garbage disposal is Still Broken.
But it was the wise Laurie who reminded me once, a while ago, of what a Sabbath means. We do not rest on the Sabbath because we have all our work Done. We do not rest because it has been Completed and so we have earned our rest. No. We rest because He has already done the important work, and He has invited us into His rest, a rest far more restful than anything I could conjure by grading every last paper, or washing every last window, or scouring my sink after fixing the new garbage disposal.
And so I am sitting by the fire, and reading to my children, and drinking a delightful concoction: a heated blend of orange juice and cran-raspberry juice and cinnamon, and I am resting in spite of All I Have To Do. Yes, I am resting, because He has already done everything that Really Matters.
Praise Him.
