Our Radical Sabbatical
Talking with my girlfriend this past New Years’ Eve, we commiserated with each other about all the time spent driving kids back and forth to different activities each week. Our conversation revolved around disgust in our ‘captivity of activity’. Later she asked me if I had made a New Years’ resolution yet this year.
Like the majority of Americans, I am a failure at New Years’ resolutions. When she asked me this dreaded question it was then that I had my epiphany…What would our year be like if we had no outside activities? Being the mother of four children, and a bonafide control freak, I am pretty good about saying no to things. But just the thought of not having to drive my vehicle back and forth everyday like one of those circus clowns in a fire truck, gave me goose bumps!
Our children took the news better than expected. We told them, “We are taking a sabbatical, a break, an activity time-out, to have more time together as a family. For the next twelve months there will be no baseball games, no voice lessons, no soccer games, no community theatre, or anything else that you can think of that we may have overlooked. ”
We decided to call this twelve month activity analysis our ‘family sabbatical’. Some have said our ‘radical sabbatical’. The Webster dictionary defines a sabbatical year as; “any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, for rest, to acquire new skills or training.” Well, if that isn’t perfect!
A rest from running myself ragged to acquire new parenting skills! Now don’t get me wrong. I love a good soccer game like anybody else. I was crushed when my daughter Meghan told me she wasn’t trying out for her high school soccer team last year. I even humbly admit I was an exceptional player on a championship team in my youth. (Is that my husband Paul I hear humming Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’?’)
Bowling lessons and art classes that produced pot holders and macrame’ wall art were also on my personal outside activity list as a child. But if you asked me now to look back and pick my favorite memories…being shuttled around from activity to activity will never be one of them. If I could go back in time, it would be to hang out at home, talking and laughing together around our family dinner table.
The time soon approaches when you will be interrogated by close friends and family with this painful inquiry; “Have you made a New Years’ resolution?” Before you answer, stop and ask yourself, “Do you go to bed at night wondering where the time in your day has gone? What in your life needs a time-out?” Before you reject the possibility of saying no to something you have always said yes to…maybe your family, like ours needs to get a little radical and make your New Years’ resolution to take a family Sabbatical.
Joanne Kraft believes she is ‘So Blessed’. She is a stay at home mom and writer who enjoys spending time gardening, thrift store shopping and blogging. Married to a husband who can always make her laugh, they are raising their four children in California. It’s a tie score in their home Girls-2 Boys-2. She has recently been published in ‘Today’s Christian Woman’ and uses her blog www.onesoblessed.blogspot.com as a tool in the Lord’s hands to perfect her gift of writing and to give other ‘not so perfect’ Christian mothers hope.
