*Apologies for the length of this entry. Since it’s been two months from my last posting, I had a lot to share. You get a two for one today… Bless you for continuing to journey with me on this path.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything, in them in six days, then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.” Exodus 20:8-11 NIV

A few weeks ago, in the aftermath of the holidays, in the midst of three weeks of bank training work, and in the process of packing essentials to live in the Dominican Republic for two months, I realized that I was worn out and that it had been a while since I had “kept a sabbath day.” Shamefully, I even hadn’t thought of “the sabbath” in a long time. Sure, I go to worship services regularly. And I’ll admit that I occasionally, on a Sunday afternoon, take a nap “to rest” or read a book with Lulu curled up with me.

But I haven’t really experienced a sabbath in a few years.

My Sunday’s for the last three years have been filled with watching a live-feed worship service at home or on the TV with my mom, caregiving one of the three loved ones that have passed, grocery shopping, catching up on emails, managing estate finances, preparing to teach banking courses in person or virtually, putting laundry away (that Bruce has washed and folded)… all those need-to-do in life things have filled every day of the week, most weeks of the year.

The thing is, I know what “sabbath” means. Heavens, I even led an entire women’s weekend retreat on this very topic years ago. Some of y’all reading along might even remember that weekend. But somewhere along the way of “living life” I have let slip the practice of taking a sabbath.

https://youtu.be/2XWeNvn2EtU   

If you Google “sabbath” you will see entries like these:

“to rest”

The Jewish Sabbath (from Hebrew Shavat/Shabbat, “to rest”) is observed throughout the year on the seventh day of the week—Saturday. According to biblical tradition, it commemorates the original seventh day on which God rested after completing the creation.”

or

“The Sabbath day was intended to be a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept by Jewish people from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and by most Christians on Sunday.”

or

“In Abrahamic religions, the Sabbath or Shabbat (from Hebrew שַׁבָּת Šabbāṯ) is a day set aside for rest and worship. According to the Book of Exodus, …”

Well, there you have it. My confession and the conviction that I have been negligent in keeping one of “God’s ten best ways to live.” The first reference to the sabbath is found in its entirety in the Torah/Bible, in the book of Exodus chapter 20, verses 1-17. These verses describe the words that God gave Moses, up in the clouds on Mt. Sinai. Words commonly known as The Ten Commandments. In verses 8-11, is where the fourth commandment is found, to keep a holy day, to rest and worship our Creator. 

When I have been most faithful to keeping a sabbath, this is what a Shabbat looked like for me. I coordinated my weekly schedule to have a worshipful, quiet day. I made sure my “chores” were done by Saturday night. I wouldn’t plan for entertaining in our home on a Sunday so I would either prepare a meal ahead (crockpots are great for this) or plan to serve a simple one for us to enjoy that evening. I purposely wouldn’t look at emails all day (harder than you think). I would enjoy time with my family or a neighbor if we happened to run into each other while out enjoying the beauty of the day. I would nap, read, or take a walk or a bike ride. 

If you reread the scripture at the beginning of this journal, you’ll see that when God gave the “top ten” to Moses, they weren’t given as a suggestion. They weren’t a “why don’t you think about it and maybe give these a try” type of communication. God gave them as commandments. Have you wondered why He picked out ten specific things to command His people to live by?

In total the “Commandments”:

1. Require that we not misuse God’s name, or place anything before God (don’t swear or make/worship other “gods”); 
2. That we be content stewards of the relationships and material things that He has provided (don’t lie, kill, steal, commit adultery, or covet, and honor your parents). 

Holy scripture commentators propose that God has several reasons for giving us the ten best ways to live. The fourth commandment regarding the sabbath, (also discussed in Exodus Chapter 31 verses 12-17 and Chapter 35 verses 1-3) is a direct expression of God’s desire for us to obey Him and emulate Him.  He worked hard for six days and then rested to appreciate it. Scriptures tell us that He is a loving yet jealous God. He loves us so much that he wants to spend time with us. He wants to relate to us. He wants us to appreciate Him and the beauty of what He made in the world. He wants us to appreciate how he made us, too.

To do this we have to have time apart from the business and busy-ness of life. God has always known that we need the time away from the stresses of living to be able to focus on just Him.

https://youtu.be/Tlzm1qYa9TU 

Secondly, when we experience a time of “sabbath”, we are not only reminded to be faithful to God with this obedience, but we also get an opportunity to build our faith in him; to strengthen our trust relationship with Him.

A sabbath can eliminate our misconception that we can not only manage but master all that is around us. When we take a “sabbath” we can break some of the chains of this world compelling us to accomplish tasks and achieve results on our own.  God gave the Israelites (who were wondering about in the desert with no stability or safety net) specific instructions on how to keep a weekly sabbath. God wanted them to take a break from work and trust Him to provide for them on that day. God wants us to experience the joy of trusting in Him for the same provision… that we haven’t had to strive for.  

As many of you all know, I am a “doer” and “manager.” This sounds so much better than to admit I have been a “Type A”, “control freak”, most of my life, doesn’t it? So, “letting things just happen”, “waiting on the Lord”, “just be”… aren’t natural for me. God has been working on me since my late 20’s to help me release my need to plan and manage my life and put all my faith in Him. I have found that “trusting God” and the work of “letting go” can be painful. I tend to hold things very tightly, so when things/people are “ripped away”, I struggle with myself and with God.

My experiences with; career sexual discrimination, infertility, losing a baby in utero, giving up a lifestyle to support Bruce through seminary and in pastoral ministry, moving around a lot for different church calls, having my benefited job eliminated and moved to a consultant role, losing our young adult son Will to cancer, and losing both my parents in the last 18 months, have each brought me closer to God and taught me to open my hands and heart for the transformation He wants to do in me. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away… blessed be the name of the Lord”.

It is hard having things you treasure taken away. It is hard to not experience life the way you thought it was going to be. But God made a covenant with those who believe in Him, and treasure a relationship with Him, that He will in turn provide us the desires of our hearts. Not immediately and not necessarily the way we want it, but He is faithful.

I’ve made some headway in letting God be God, because I am not. But I know I still have a long way to go. By spending an entire day once a week worshiping God, focusing on His love and many provisions for me, I can be refined and strengthened in my spiritual walk.

This next song is one that I was introduced to by my Mayo Clinic Mohs surgeon Dr. J.C. Martinez and his surgical nurse, Kaleena, literally, when I was having a skin cancer removed from my face almost five years ago…a few days after our daughter Kate was married. The music was a powerful backdrop to my sharing about Kate’s wedding, which birthed a beautiful sharing that my young doctor lost of his mother when he was in college, and Kaleena, (who now a special friend and I found out later that she) was privately undergoing tests for cancer herself at the time, and was missing her Mom who lived across the country. We were all crying by the time the song ended and at created a “special moment” as Dr. JC put it, that has blessed me ever since. I don’t know the backstory for this song from the musician Ray LaMontague’s point of view but I like to listen quietly to the words as if they were coming from God. Listen, read the words, and note the phrasing…

https://youtu.be/0TTpOGuvi3k 

Thirdly, when we rest from the things of the world to be with God, we build intimacy with Him, we build trust in Him, and we can be filled with wonder, restored in our interpersonal relationships, and rested physically. When we’re rested, we can better focus on the “work” He has us doing during the other six days of the week. To have a focus on beauty and the positive is so good for our mental health.

God wants us to know that setting time apart to delight in Him should be a priority every week and it is for our personal good. Our own mental and physical well-being is at stake when we don’t allow ourselves to be refreshed.

So refresh yourself by taking some deep breaths and spend the next minutes, listening to this worship music, soaking in the words of love, and meditate on resting next to God.

https://youtu.be/EMXUiMA0IIE  

So, why my personal focus on the sabbath right now? 

This past September, during a work trip to Argentina, my husband Bruce was approached by Rafa, the Regional Leader for Young Life in the Dominican Republic (DR) and across the Caribbean, and he invited us to come to the DR for two months. Bruce’s role would be to help prepare Rafa’s new camp and ministry leaders for the upcoming short-term mission trips the ministry is scheduled to host this spring and summer. Since I was able to provide some training on budgeting and financial analysis for Young Life’s ministry in Nicaragua several years ago, we put out feelers with the ministry to see if I could support them with training during our stay. There didn’t seem to be the same need in the region, so I started wondering and praying for how God would have me use me time there.

The idea began to form for me not to necessarily go looking for something to do but to take time away, to rest, to heal from grief, and to reflect on God’s love and provision for me. I felt the time away could take the shape of an extended sabbath….a “sabbatical”. 

The word and concept of a sabbatical comes from the same Latin root word as sabbath. To rest and draw strength from God. A sabbatical sounded to me like a very good way to spend my time away. My excitement for the time the DR began to grow.

God, Your faithful love is so valuable that people take refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They are filled from the abundance of Your house, You let them drink from Your refreshing stream, for with You is life’s fountain. In Your light we will see light.

Psalm 36 7-9

So that is what I am doing right now, in the first month of our time here. As I share with you, I have stepped away from most (mas y menos) of the day-to-day demands of my regular life and working world in the U.S. I have been walking in the beautiful nature here at the Young Life camp outside Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic called Pico Escondido. I have worshiped God with new Dominican friends and enjoyed a Sunday lunch with them at a local buffet café. I have napped, read, returned some work emails and built an excel spreadsheet for some upcoming work)…and am now writing.  

https://youtu.be/ZPZrxZgQjrg

Daily I have “work” to do here. I pick up trash on my walks around the camp (Rhonda D, you have taught me well), I walk outside our two-room apartment to the ramada sitting at the far end of our building, to get 3 liters at a time of potable water for cooking, drinking, and brushing our teeth. To get food provisions we walk down a big hill on a rocky road. It’s about a half-mile down to the super mercado … then as Bruce says,“we walk the 2 ½ miles back up.” 

I also volunteer in the camp kitchen, where I am learning some new Spanish words and enjoy listening to the sisterly banter of the women who help prepare meals for kids and their adult counselors who attend weekend camps.

Regarding my unofficial kitchen duties, I have “graduated” from initially unloading bags of fresh produce and clean laundry and organizing them on metal storage shelves….to peeling hundreds of heads of garlic over two days… not cloves but heads, to chopping veggies to make pico de gallo salsa and slicing the super thin dozens of onions for topping a native dish called Mangu (cooked and mashed green bananas with butter and cream.) I think that they gave me the onion chopping job to see if I would really hanging in there.  I start with four onions and that quickly became a couple dozen. They don’t know I wear contacts so the onions don’t bother me. I think I inadvertently earned their respect, which backfired today when I wore my glasses instead of contacts… it was painful chopping there for a while. Above is a photo of my garlic assignment. Mucho ajo!  Un monton de trabajo!

If you know anyone from the DR, you know that they speak quickly and I may catch 2 out of 10 words they are saying…or should I say shouting. Okay, they speak with a lot of passion! Kitchens are noisy places anyway and with the din of four to five ladies “conversing” it makes an amazing humming sound in my ears, I focus on cutting, listening in, and praying. The life of work and prayer in the kitchen has taken on a real monastic feel for me. 

In our apartment I clean regularly. With the facts that; we can’t flush toilet paper here (you put it in the trash can in the bathroom 😦 ), we have dusty/rocky roads at camp, and our windows stay open (no AC)… there is always some wiping down, sweeping and mopping to do.  I prepare our meals with a four-burner gas stop top that we use matches to light. We have no microwave or icemaker, and it takes about 5 minutes to make a cup of coffee in the mini percolator… instead of the 30 seconds it takes with the Keurig at home.

These inconveniences mean I can take a few moments of sabbath time to just gaze out the window and appreciate what God has created. Until today, we had one cutting/prep knife, one cooking spoon (no spatula to turn our food) one pan (everything sticks to it so you need a stainless scouring pad to get it clean) and one medium size ancient pot (no lid). So, we splurged at the super mercado and bought a non-stick frying pan and a small pot with a lid. Despite all this I appreciate God’s provision for good food and the comfortable place that has begun to feel like home.

Is it sounding like a sabbath experience to you? You bet it is! I’ve found the shift in focus has actually been a restful time for me. Having to focus on life’s basics and getting to prepare fresh, locally grown foods is energizing. In the evenings there currently aren’t meeting to get off to or projects to make progress on. We have no compelling reasons to check email, yet another time. Just time cooking, talking and relaxing. 

Another thing the sabbatical is teaching me is what “First-World Problems” mean, and how I have let so many petty things get on my nerves and rob me of my peace. Here, outside of Jarabacoa, we lose either power, water, or the internet connection every day. Sometimes multiple times a day, for two out of these three “necessities”.  Here most people have a few sets of clothing and can only afford rice, beans and whatever is growing in their yard. When they have a chicken, they eat every single part of it…including the feet (minus the toe tips… I watched them chop them off today!). The feet are a particular favorite. I spared you a picture of the outer chest of a momma pig that was cooking in a pot this afternoon. They boil that part of the poor pig and then oven roasted it crisp… “Chicharron” it is called… oh my. Perspective is everything.

On the other end of the spectrum… I fortunately asked for a Kindle for Christmas (compared to my iPad they have a super long battery life and light up on their own!), and I brought along with us some gluten-free crackers and a few travel candles. There are benefits of being a “list person” after all… see my December journal entry… So, we’ve periodically enjoyed candle-lit appetizers and an evening meal followed by time with a good book… while saying a word of thanks for the gas stove top that lights with a match so we could have a hot meal!

I am treasuring the rest and peace here with the different pace of life. There is so much of God to observe and experience here. My prayer is that regardless of where I am that I can learn to carry a spirit of sabbath with me every day, and that I will have the discipline to continue to have days of quiet and space from technology and other people. It’s a little hard in a two-room apartment to have the feeling of a sabbatical all the time :), but Bruce has been great about working at the Young Life Camp office just up the hill and giving me space to be quiet and just be.

It’s our second week here and I am learning that it takes time to decompress from our “First-World” pace and step away from life’s distractions to embrace God. I am more and more aware that if I don’t allow myself to rest and listen to God, I won’t hear from Him the direction I should go. He can’t direct and equip me for what’s next on my life’s path.

https://youtu.be/sQqLWqYSCTE

Long ago I heard the expression, “you have to fill up your own ‘pitcher’ in order to have something to ‘pour out’ into other people’s lives.” So, let’s circle back to the question from earlier: Have you wondered why He picked out ten specific things to command His people to live by? … particularly to take time off to rest and relate to Him?

I don’t think it is because He wants to control us by limiting what we should do. God isn’t a killjoy. No, I think it is all about Him loving us so much that he wants us to cultivate a peaceful mind and a physical wellbeing by being obedient. Submitting to Him because He, like any good parent, knows what’s best for our best lives. I know I want what’s best for me, so I am learning anew that I need to be obedient to God by resting in Him.

“We(I) continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way.”

Colossians 1: 9-10

By the way… I just learned from Roy, another gringo who was the camp manager here for 20 years (he is now responsible for building a camp for Young Life in Haiti), that the name of the camp, Pico Escondido, means “hidden peak”.  Roy explained that it was named for the mountain that reins above the camp, that is sometimes hidden behind clouds. As I write to you here is what it looks like.

Interesting…a peak hidden by clouds… just like when Moses got the Ten Commandments from God on the top of Mt. Sinai.

Yeah, this time here in Republica Dominicana, is going to be a great sabbath. Todo esta bien!

https://youtu.be/8iDuZv_5MQk