“Hey, Mom, can you smile at me?” That question stopped me in my tracks. I had been busy, preoccupied, stressed, and distracted. Sound familiar? These crazy seasons of life seem to creep up without announcement, and one day we find ourselves where we never meant to be, hardly holding our heads above the waters of busyness and distraction. And our children’s words serve as a lighthouse beacon, guiding us back to shores of refuge and purpose. The simple request of my son left me with my breath caught in my throat. Since when did my son have to request a smile from me? My mind had been in a million places—but not with him. And somewhere in the mess of it all, I had misplaced my smile, and he had taken notice.
Over the next few weeks he would repeat his request on several occasions, each time finding my spirit a little more unsettled. Our children’s words serve as an unrefined and unedited reminder of what they need from us. It wasn’t that I was not happy—not at all. It’s just that sometimes our smile can get buried under the pressures of life. Leave it to my boy to notice the little things that are actually the really big things. Like when Mom’s smile starts to fade.
It wasn’t only his request that had me considering my priorities. In the rare moments when I would set our busy realities aside in favor of a book, I was reading Hands Free Life by Rachel Macy Stafford. In the book, Stafford speaks of “keeping track of life,” a term her young daughter coined. Stafford explains it like this:
Keeping track of life is knowing you’re on your true path toward fulfillment. It’s being at peace with who you are and how you are living. It’s placing your head on the pillow at night knowing you’ve connected with someone or something that made your heart come alive. It’s investing in what really matters, understanding full well that managing life is the tendency but living life is the goal. . . . It is a conscious decision to focus on what really matters when a sea of insignificance tries to pull you away.2
That sounds like a wonderful way to spend our 936 pennies, if you ask me.
I knew the busyness of our family’s current season was necessary. But I also knew that I could not allow what mattered most to take the back burner. I could not stop smiling for my boy. Or for me. I was determined to take back our days and redirect them toward significance. This is when my obsession with chamomile tea took root. In those instances when I felt the tension nagging at my shoulders—when stress was rising and my neck began to tighten—I would heat up some water, stir in a spoonful of honey, and submerge a bag of chamomile tea. I’d watch the steam swirl above my mug as it steeped, then sit to sip and savor a few moments of pause.
Before long, our middle boy, Ellis, began to notice my new habit, and he wanted to join in. One particular afternoon, as I sought to calm our day that was threatening to slip into chaos mode, I reached for a bag of tea. “Can I have tea, Mom?” I smiled at him and grabbed an extra mug and a bag of berry tea. I stirred some extra honey into his tea and cooled it down with some cold water before slipping a bright orange straw in and placing it onto the table next to mine. There we sat together, sipping our tea and talking of our day. And before I knew it, all of the tension in my neck had melted. With a simple cup of tea, we’d reclaimed control and pushed away any sign of chaos or stress or rush. We had redeemed time.
It has been practices such as these—sitting to savor a hot cup of tea, to read a few pages in a book, or to dig in the dirt with my boys—that have served as sacred pauses in our day. They act as transitions from activity to activity—a reminder between tasks and activities to stop and remember what all the work is for. A few minutes to ask ourselves, “Am I spending this day on things that truly matter?” These transitions have quickly become an anchor to our days. They’re often the springboard for meaningful conversation, or an invitation to making memories among the green grass and rain puddles. These transitions are a way of giving myself permission to sit and play, to read and think, to rest and wonder, to refocus and reclaim.
Perhaps this was the heart behind God’s ordinance of a sabbath rest. As the One who made us, surely He knew our tendency to default to busyness—and He wants more for us. I want more for my kids, too. I want more than pressured days and stress-filled schedules. I want more than demanding agendas and exhausted evenings. I want them to know rest, fully and thoroughly. I want them to understand that God made us to enjoy His creation, and to discover true fulfillment in Him—not in our work. I want them to know that “there remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. . . . Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:9–11). I want to show them exactly how it’s done—through tea-sipping and hammock-swaying and time-taking.
I have come to believe that parenthood must always begin with rest. I read them in college and they would never escape me: the words of Watchman Nee, a leader in the indigenous church movement throughout China from 1903 to 1972. He wrote,
In the creation God worked from the first to the sixth day and rested on the seventh. We may truthfully say that for those first six days he was very busy. Then, the task he had set himself completed, he ceased to work. The seventh day became the sabbath of God; it was God’s rest.
But what of Adam? Where did he stand in relation to that rest of God? Adam, we are told, was created on the sixth day. Clearly, then, he had no part in those first six days of work, for he came into being only at their end.
God’s seventh day was, in fact, Adam’s first.
Whereas God worked six days and then enjoyed his sabbath rest, Adam began his life with the sabbath; for God works before he rests, while man must first enter into God’s rest, and then alone can he work.3
This idea of “make every effort,” or to strive toward rest, seems paradoxical at first. Is striving not the very opposite of rest? But when we look deeper to the roots of the word striving, it gives the idea of an endeavor, of giving our due diligence toward a cause, and to study something. Striving, it ends up, looks a lot like chasing after rest by unearthing it from every piece of our day. We spot it and lay hold of it. We see the opportunity for a pocket of rest, and we don’t allow it to escape us, because in order to do the work well, we must begin with rest.
These integral breaks throughout my day serve the same purpose as the ancient practice of sabbath—a time to stop, reflect, refocus, and rest. And that is exactly where I find strength to continue on. We must first enter into God’s rest, and then we can get to work spending our 936 pennies in a lasting manner. Sometimes it’s found in a cup of tea, and other times in a walk around the block. Maybe it’s in the pages of a good book or in watching the sycamore leaves sway in the breeze. Whatever it be, find those things that signal transition—the stopping place between tasks on that to-do list: sabbath-rest moments available to us each and every day. We can’t always toss that list out the window. Things need to get done. But we can string together those tasks with a thread of purpose, and mark them with meaning through the act of sacred pauses. After all, looking back in twenty years, it’s not going to be the folded laundry piles and checked-off work tasks that we remember. It will be the steam dancing atop our mugs and smiles shared with a three-year-old over a cup of tea on an ordinary afternoon.