One foot in front of the other, I ran.  Music setting my pace, energy burst within me as I left behind a house with sleeping boys and a husband on-call but finally at home.  The sun was blinding as it began its descent. Stepping over roots on the trail, I launched forward.

With each step, I unwound from the day.  Saturdays used to mean sleeping late and trips out to breakfast.  They meant home projects and time on the couch.  Now with two young boys and a husband in orthopedic residency, Saturdays often mean rising early, changing diapers, negotiating screen time, cutting peels off of apples, and reaching the limits of my patience.

With each step, I called to mind Barbara Brown Taylor’s chapter “The Practice of Saying No: SABBATH” in An Altar in the World.  Just an hour before, I read over her call for Sabbath and found myself tempted to practice envy more than rest.  In my life stage, Saturdays mean more “yes” than “no” – patients downtown needs doctors who say “yes” to providing healthcare on the weekends and children in my house need a mom who says “yes” to providing life care even on the weekends.

Barbara Brown Taylor finds inspiration in the Friday evening Shabbat service in Jewish tradition where they light Sabbath candles that serve as reminders to rest as God did on the seventh day – “made in God’s image, you too shall rest” and “made in God’s image, you too are free.”

Practicing it over and over again they become accomplished at saying no, which is how they gradually become able to resist the culture’s killing rhythms of drivenness and depletion, compulsion and collapse.  Worshiping a different kind of God, they are shaped in God’s image, stopping every seven days to celebrate their divine creation and liberation.

Now off the beaten path, I take out my headphones to become more aware of my surroundings.  Sunlight floods all I can see.  The air is cool but still speaks of fall.  My breaths are short but I feel alive.  I stop and I practice Sabbath for the few moments I have.  From deep within me, the words emerge within me… I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.

I will trust…no matter how unknown the path is before me, I will trust in the God whose calling to love the world will bring me enough purpose, gratitude, and joy to make all fears, pains, and stresses worth it.

I will rest…despite my inner voice that seeks my own self-interest, I will calm my heart and know that the world does not need more of me but instead needs to rest in the ENOUGH of God.

and I will be free…. free from the fear of the future, free from the desire to be the best, free from the stresses that threaten my joy.

Done with the hills, I stop.  I am alone.  I catch my breath.  And I repeat it out-loud to the hills until I believe it.

I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.
I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.
I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.
I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.
I will trust.  I will rest and I will be free.

I pick back up the pace and I repeat it until it has seeped into this tired Saturday heart.  I return home out-of-breath but full-of-spirit – ready to be again the wife, mom, and human being God is calling me to be.