Unusual Sunday
Ordinarily, my Sunday morning begins at 7:45 AM. I rise, shower, speed-tidy my room, and drive to church, where I must arrive at 8:30 because I am room leader for Kitty Cats 1 (read: three year olds). That concludes around 11:00 or 11:15, at which point I go upstairs, collapse gratefully into the nearest plushy seat, and absorb the atmosphere of happy celebration. After the service, which ends at 1:00, my family gathers at our home or the home of one of my brothers for a big lunch, replete with Baby (yay!) and naps and jokes and political talk and all the other joys of being a large (twelve strong now), loving, tight-knit family. And I love this routine dearly: in fact, I look forward to it all week.
Today, God had other plans.
When my alarm went off at 7:45 and I sat up to turn it off, the room reeled a bit. "Uh-oh," I thought. "It's here." In this case, "it" is the stage of exhaustion-induced semi-illness that I reach when I've been working all day and much of the night for too long. My average limit is about a month, and counting up the days in the back of my mind, I realized that this limit I had now pressed up against. "Not to worry," I thought, "this has been happening intermittently for two years. We can deal with this." This, of course, is further proof (as if any were needed) of my arrogance.
Just after I finished my shower, I realized that no, actually, I couldn't "deal with this." Not today. I tiptoed into the girls' room and woke Marjorie, who works with me in Children's Ministry. After exchanging the usual formalities (it was a good thing I went, because the poor lamb's alarm clock hadn't gone off), I said "Babe, I'm afraid I hit the wall this morning. Can you cover for me?"
She, being the marvelous sister that she is, instantly agreed. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart and returned to bed, where I remained, dreaming off and on of needing to get up and work on Les Miserables, until 11:30. Since I never sleep that late, I realized upon waking up to a still house and everybody gone off to church that I had probably better not push it.
So, I did what I always do when I need a miraculous cure. I got a blanket, a Bible, a journal, a few other books, and tottered off to the back yard. Something about lying still in the grass for an hour or two is, for me, wonderfully refreshing. It also helps that everything outside is astonishing to my eyes because I've been inside all summer---the sight of an actual sky and the feel and sound and taste of actual outdoors sent my senses reeling in quite a different way; this time with pleasure.
I don't know exactly how long I lay there, because absolute unawareness of time is an acutely important part of the procedure. I know that for the first hour or so I had to fight an every-few-minutes rising temptation to go back into the house, sneak into my computer, and work. Fortunately, a lifelong rule inculcated by Daddy----"Do no work on Sunday"----asserted itself, and released me to simply drown myself in the day.
Oh, gentle reader, how grateful I am! I read C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves, and sometimes tossed the book aside in order to stare at the sky and marvel at the sight of trees---actual trees!---over my head. I must have been drowsing when Brittainy appeared. "You opened your eyes," she told me later. "They were very blue."
"Oh." I said. "Yes, I forgot. They are blue." And then it seemed strange to me that I had forgotten, but why should that be strange? I had forgotten that the sky is blue, and that the world is green, and that the grass is fragrant and that the evenings are soft and alluring---why should I not have forgotten also that my eyes are very blue? But now I remembered it all.
"Would you care to guess what the sermon was about?" She asked, as we walked back towards the house.
"Don't waste your leisure?" I inquired, wryly.
"No. Don't waste your job."
She told me the main points, which were mostly about diligence and faithfulness, and we laughed together. "Somehow," I said, "I'm not feeling particularly convicted about not working hard."
"No, somehow I'm not either. But it's good to remember the unto the Lord part."
"Yes indeed," I said.
The family called to ask if I wanted to lunch with them at David and Casey's, but I regretfully declined in favor of solitude. "If I'm going to get better, I need to not think," I explained to Brittainy. "And people gatherings require thinking."
So we went out to lunch and talked of Lewis's comments on friendship-love, and then to a bookshop, and both wrote letters and she messed about with her computer and I messed about with books: I bought War and Peace and the original Girls Handy Book, companion of the Boy Scout handy book. The girl version tells all about games and toys and sewing projects and teas and things. I added it to my library for the sake of my niece.
Then we came home, and I didn't want any dinner so I got a bottle of hard cider and War and Peace and went to the back deck to enjoy twilight. Daddy joined me after a bit, and we talked shop and business plans quite cozily for half-an-hour.
And now, here I am, about to get back to work on Les Miserables (the no-work rule, if you're curious, begins at sundown on Saturday night and lasts until sundown on Sunday: Mom and Dad are rather Hebraic that way). It has been a thoroughly unusual Sunday, but once in a great while such Sundays can be the best thing in the world. I am grateful for this one.
Today, God had other plans.
When my alarm went off at 7:45 and I sat up to turn it off, the room reeled a bit. "Uh-oh," I thought. "It's here." In this case, "it" is the stage of exhaustion-induced semi-illness that I reach when I've been working all day and much of the night for too long. My average limit is about a month, and counting up the days in the back of my mind, I realized that this limit I had now pressed up against. "Not to worry," I thought, "this has been happening intermittently for two years. We can deal with this." This, of course, is further proof (as if any were needed) of my arrogance.
Just after I finished my shower, I realized that no, actually, I couldn't "deal with this." Not today. I tiptoed into the girls' room and woke Marjorie, who works with me in Children's Ministry. After exchanging the usual formalities (it was a good thing I went, because the poor lamb's alarm clock hadn't gone off), I said "Babe, I'm afraid I hit the wall this morning. Can you cover for me?"
She, being the marvelous sister that she is, instantly agreed. I thanked her from the bottom of my heart and returned to bed, where I remained, dreaming off and on of needing to get up and work on Les Miserables, until 11:30. Since I never sleep that late, I realized upon waking up to a still house and everybody gone off to church that I had probably better not push it.
So, I did what I always do when I need a miraculous cure. I got a blanket, a Bible, a journal, a few other books, and tottered off to the back yard. Something about lying still in the grass for an hour or two is, for me, wonderfully refreshing. It also helps that everything outside is astonishing to my eyes because I've been inside all summer---the sight of an actual sky and the feel and sound and taste of actual outdoors sent my senses reeling in quite a different way; this time with pleasure.
I don't know exactly how long I lay there, because absolute unawareness of time is an acutely important part of the procedure. I know that for the first hour or so I had to fight an every-few-minutes rising temptation to go back into the house, sneak into my computer, and work. Fortunately, a lifelong rule inculcated by Daddy----"Do no work on Sunday"----asserted itself, and released me to simply drown myself in the day.
Oh, gentle reader, how grateful I am! I read C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves, and sometimes tossed the book aside in order to stare at the sky and marvel at the sight of trees---actual trees!---over my head. I must have been drowsing when Brittainy appeared. "You opened your eyes," she told me later. "They were very blue."
"Oh." I said. "Yes, I forgot. They are blue." And then it seemed strange to me that I had forgotten, but why should that be strange? I had forgotten that the sky is blue, and that the world is green, and that the grass is fragrant and that the evenings are soft and alluring---why should I not have forgotten also that my eyes are very blue? But now I remembered it all.
"Would you care to guess what the sermon was about?" She asked, as we walked back towards the house.
"Don't waste your leisure?" I inquired, wryly.
"No. Don't waste your job."
She told me the main points, which were mostly about diligence and faithfulness, and we laughed together. "Somehow," I said, "I'm not feeling particularly convicted about not working hard."
"No, somehow I'm not either. But it's good to remember the unto the Lord part."
"Yes indeed," I said.
The family called to ask if I wanted to lunch with them at David and Casey's, but I regretfully declined in favor of solitude. "If I'm going to get better, I need to not think," I explained to Brittainy. "And people gatherings require thinking."
So we went out to lunch and talked of Lewis's comments on friendship-love, and then to a bookshop, and both wrote letters and she messed about with her computer and I messed about with books: I bought War and Peace and the original Girls Handy Book, companion of the Boy Scout handy book. The girl version tells all about games and toys and sewing projects and teas and things. I added it to my library for the sake of my niece.
Then we came home, and I didn't want any dinner so I got a bottle of hard cider and War and Peace and went to the back deck to enjoy twilight. Daddy joined me after a bit, and we talked shop and business plans quite cozily for half-an-hour.
And now, here I am, about to get back to work on Les Miserables (the no-work rule, if you're curious, begins at sundown on Saturday night and lasts until sundown on Sunday: Mom and Dad are rather Hebraic that way). It has been a thoroughly unusual Sunday, but once in a great while such Sundays can be the best thing in the world. I am grateful for this one.
posted by Praelucor at 8:08 PM
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