Episode 32: Sabbath in Different Seasons with Melissa Dyer

[00:00:00] You’re listening to episode 32 of the Simply Sabbath podcast.

Rest doesn’t have to be a four-letter word. If you feel like you’re about to break from exhaustion. Let me invite you to Simply Sabbath, a podcast for the burnt-out Christian mom, who longs to get back to the core of who she is and to reclaim the deep joy and stabilizing peace Jesus has for her in her every day– without the mom guilt that often accompanies self-care practices.

Hi, my name is Rachel Fahrenbach and I help busy moms just like you add a simple restful family Sabbath to their week. So they can experience a refueling that gives them exactly what they need to live the life that God has called them to. I’m so glad you’ve joined me today. Let’s get to it.

Rachel: So often women come to me and they ask, how [00:01:00] can I Sabbath when my life. Fill in the blank. And I often say to them that Sabbath changes from season to season. It doesn’t have to be one way. And so to stop thinking about it, being this big unattainable goal of like, it’s gotta be so perfectly set up and just start where you’re at and start with what your family situation, your season of life, what it allows for.

And that’s why I’m so excited to have Melissa on with me today. We’re going to talk about how her Sabbath practice has ebbed and flowed over the years at different seasons of life have demanded her Sabbath practice to look different. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you, Melissa. Thank you for being here.

Melissa: Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited for this conversation.

Rachel: So before we get into it, I want to make sure that you guys know a little bit about Melissa. I’ve met Melissa through an online writing community called hope*writers, which you guys have heard me mentioned many, many times because I love it so much.

Um, but Melissa [00:02:00] actually just recently published a book like in the last year, right.

Melissa: In 2020, yes.

Rachel: Yeah. In the midst of oh, the crazy you pushed forward and, and released that book and that’s, that’s amazing. That’s so inspiring. Um, but you are a writer, a wife, a mom, and an encourager of women. And Melissa wants to show you how to cultivate courage in your everyday ordinary life.

And by sharing her personal story of transformation, you’ll recognize how to apply the, grow it principle and live out your own courageous transformation. So thank you again, Melissa, for being here. Well, how about we start with you just telling us a little bit about your family and yourself.

Melissa: Well, uh, I am very fortunate to live in bright and sunny, south Florida, just a mile from the beach, which was really a dream of mine to get to.

So I was born in south Florida, but my family and I [00:03:00] moved here 11 years ago. From right outside the Washington DC beltway. So I–

Rachel: oh wow

Melissa: often introduce myself as having two body clock time zone ones. I have beltway time and I have island time and you can kind of, and, and I think that works with my Sabbath life because my Sabbath changes depending on what body clock i, uh, I have on at the moment. So I’ve been married for 22 years. I have two young adult children now. We just became empty nesters and I am a very active and involved aunt of two, very, um, energetic nephews. They’re six and seven. So we kind of had weekend kids, many weekends out of

Rachel: Oh that’s a lot of fun. Oh, that’s so cool. I’ve always lived a little bit far away from my aunts and uncles quite have that opportunity. So that’s really [00:04:00] neat that you have that. So tell us, what does Sabbath mean to you? Define Sabbath for us.

Melissa: Well, to be really simple about the term Sabbath, to me, it’s any block of time set aside for spiritual rest and renewal.

Rachel: I like that definition. That’s good. And what does Sabbath, like, what does your Sabbath actually no, let’s stop before we dive into your Sabbath practice and what it looks like, how did you even start practicing Sabbath? What was your journey?

Melissa: Our journey really began, uh, more than about 15 years ago. We own a real estate brokerage and the real estate industry by nature is very fluid and it is very, um, fast paced. So you’re really looking at people wanting to have access to your time and your calendar to do work [00:05:00] 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So when we found ourselves with young children, and driving separate cars to church on Sunday so that we could go get to work appointments. You know, I really, it, it wasn’t sitting right with me and I said, something has to stop. So at that point in time in our life, we said, okay, no working on Sundays, which was a huge, it was a big paradigm shift for us.

And we literally, we had employees at the time. We said, no working on Sundays. That means we don’t want you to take any client calls, no open house. We want each Sunday is for church, family rest. And we started to do that. So we moved open houses on Saturday, which may the sixth day of the week, even fuller, but that, and we set our voicemail and said, I’m sorry, we don’t return calls on Sundays.

We’ll be back to you on Monday. And–

Rachel: did you have pushback?

Melissa: Actually we [00:06:00] didn’t, we got a lot of praise for it. And I think that people felt, you know, like that was a really impressive thing that we put that out there. And also, um, they felt then that they didn’t have to chase it down on a Sunday. So I, I think that it worked well with that.

Um, but it was hard again, it’s kind of, it is very much like a tithe that it’s an act of faith. Especially when your first step into Sabbath is because there is actual work that could be getting done.

Rachel: Yeah. That idea you mentioned about the sixth day. I think sometimes we, um, in our culture, we’re set up with this mindset of like a five day work week and then two days of rest and it’s really, it’s almost counterintuitive, but it’s like, it’s a biblical principle, right? Like it’s like woven into the [00:07:00] creation story, like six days of work, one day of rest. I don’t know about you, but I know like if we try to take like two full days off and we’re not like on a designated vacation, like I’m just talking like everyday weekend by like that halfway through the second day, I’m like antsy.

Like I feel like I gotta go back to work and do something. And I think that when you start practicing Sabbath, you almost release that need for two days. Like you almost release that like, oh, I need a full weekend. You’re like, Nope, I can fill up my one day out of the weekend with work and it sounds like that you guys said it’s more important to us to have six full days and one day full day of rest than to try to shove everything in throughout the whole week.

Melissa: Yes, I do think you become efficient it’s that I can’t remember that rule, but as much time as you have your able to fit your work in. And I think it does make you steward your working hours, [00:08:00] um, because we’re not, we’re no longer restrained by daylight anymore. I mean, we can fashion our own daylight and doors and, and keep it going. Um, but I do agree with you because even, even to have really an Orthodox Sabbath, they, the meal prep has to go on. So if you’re thinking about, if you are a family that you do have a nine to five job, then you’re like, okay, kids, sports, birthday parties, meal prep, lawn work, household chores get it all done on Saturday. Then you really have created a six full days for yourself.

Rachel: Yep. Exactly. So after you guys started practicing a Sabbath for your business, how did that translate into your personal life?

Melissa: Gradually. Uh, of course, then we had Sunday morning church, which doesn’t get out to keep it real. It doesn’t always feel very restful, especially if [00:09:00] you’re serving. Um, if you have young kids just getting them there, that’s not a very restful journey, but

Rachel: I’m so glad you said that because I think, I think if we’re all being honest, Sunday mornings can suck sometimes. They really do. Everybody is just, it’s just, it just does. So very rarely do I find a mom that like, I love Sunday mornings hustle to get out to church.

Melissa: I know I really do try to look at young moms when I see them now coming to church and your job is just to get them in the door. I don’t care what they’re wearing. I don’t care if they’re hair’s brushed, like just check them in the kid’s min and you get, you get what you need for your hour.

Um, because it is, it’s the reality. We’re still even to attend church. Sure it is counter-cultural for us in, you know, our, the generation and place where we live in the United States. So [00:10:00] I think anytime you’re going to push against the grain of culture, it’s, you’re going to have to fight for it.

Rachel: That’s an interesting perspective. I never thought about it that way, because I have thought like, why is it so hard to get out the door on Sunday morning? Like we get out the door every other day of the week. Like why is Sunday morning? But I think it’s that, you’re right. It’s, it’s pushing against the grain of something. It’s, it’s headed to something that’s not a cultural norm.

It’s it’s really truly saying, okay, I’m setting aside this time to worship God and there’s going to be resistance there to it. So mamas you’re, you’re fighting the spiritual battle. When you’re getting out the door in the morning, maybe just reframing it a little bit will help you.

Melissa: Yes. And you’re doing good. You’re doing good. Every step you’re taking, you’re doing a good job.

Rachel: Exactly. So you started slowly implementing the Sabbath practice. So when you started [00:11:00] considering what it would look like, you had to consider this idea of church and how that fits into your, your rest then. What happened next?

Melissa: So I do find that at the beginning, we slowly started to say, we did take a hard line with sports and we said, we’re not going to sign up for any sports that play on Sundays. So at least we got it down to that Sunday morning block. And then we did try to have as much slowing down and as leisure as we could, at least for the second half of the day where you felt like at least you could get a little bit of nap in. And again, at that point it was. More about creating a discipline of no, than it was in particular, spiritually, very renewing. My Sabbath now can be 30 minutes long and I’ve been in the presence of God and I feel very restored. So that’s a journey. First. [00:12:00] It begins with, let me get some structure around setting time to say no to everything else. And then I think as that becomes, um, easier for you, you’ve kind of done that first step, then what you put in that time again, and then also the trajectory of your spiritual growth and what your Sabbath looks like, I think is going to be very fluid. I mean, I’ll go to a silent retreat now for several hours and I can tolerate that. That would have been not very enjoyable for me, 15 years go. It would just be too much. So I would say start small.

Rachel: Do you think that the older you’ve gotten and the more you practiced saying no that you’ve created more margin in your life and more space to hear that voice of God? And [00:13:00] so it comes a little quicker. You can enter into it a little bit faster for lack of a better word, because you’ve practiced the saying no, you’ve practiced focusing your attention. You practice eliminating distraction, so you don’t have to have a full day necessarily to focus in your time because you’ve been practicing it year after year the saying no and creating that space for you and God to reconnect?

Melissa: I would say yes, in part and also self-awareness so I’m very self educated on what is my natural spiritual bent. So I really am practicing a rule of life for myself. So I understand how I connect with God. I know how to get there faster because I’ve explored that.

If I set and I was like, oh, if I started right now and I’m like, [00:14:00] I need to read one chapter of scripture and I need to eat, you know what I mean? I need to build the Instagram photo of what someone says, Sabbath is like… that’s not going to work for me now I can go and I can spend an hour and a half on a beach walk and I can listen to worship music and that’s been hugely restorative to me because I’m a naturalist. And because I connect in worship and because it’s, you know, it’s outdoors and I feel very connected to the ocean because I was born on an island. These are, you know, but then, and that’s the chemistry of what’s my Sabbath time will look like and change or knowing that I’m an Enneagram seven. So I actually need to practice silence that works with my personality disposition. So just those kinds of things I think you grow and you learn more about what’s going to [00:15:00] work for you over time.

Rachel: Makes a lot of sense. And I do believe that the more you understand how you’re uniquely designed and gifted, the more you can engage with God through that, you know, like I think that we sometimes dismiss our unique design and our unique gifting, in our outpouring of worship. We think worship has to look a certain way or Bible study has to look a certain way. How do you grow your faith? Well, if you ask somebody, how do you grow your faith? It’s always read and pray, right? Read your Bible and pray every day and you grow right. But I think when we dismiss how we’re uniquely designed and uniquely gifted, we forget that there’s purpose in that to live out God’s kingdom call on our life. And that’s an act of worship. That’s a living act of worship, you know? So I [00:16:00] think that’s really, really important. What you just said about that.

I liked this, well, two questions, one, I want to circle back to the sports thing. You said that you guys made a hard, fast rule about no sports on Sunday. Do your kids ever feel like they missed. With that?

Melissa: When we started, I think they were probably young enough that they, they weren’t old enough to really give pushback. So we never got on a track that we couldn’t stay on. If that makes sense?

Rachel: Yes, you caught it early enough that you could cultivate what it was going to look like in your lives, and it just became part of your, your rhythm.

Melissa: Yes. And I would say we’re a very athletic family. Now. Occasionally my, my daughter would have, uh, she ended up getting very involved in synchronized swimming and swim at a junior Olympic level. So every once [00:17:00] in a while she would have a meet, but there wasn’t it, that was like two or three times a year. That was not every Sunday. There are some sports that they want to schedule a practice, or even there could have been a time where someone said. Hey, we’re going to do our practices on Sunday. We, and we would say we need to be put on a different team.

We don’t do practices on Sundays, but, um, so it can be done. I understand that if you have a child that’s older and they’re already on a track, then you, you figure out you figure out something else. But we had to make some kind of hard decisions for our family. Just a fight against the pressure of the seven days, 24 hours a day, availability to everyone else.

Rachel: I love that you just said the availability. I think we often think about ourselves as being, you know, in this is due yesterday mentality, you know, like, oh, and the [00:18:00] fact that people can get ahold of you on your cell phone, text messaging, email, all the things, instant message.

And we forget that our kids are almost in the same boat as us at the teenage level. And there is almost a sense in our culture that they should be at the drop of a hat, able to do whatever practices, whatever games, because they’re on this team. And so I, I think it’s really important for us as moms, us, as parents to ask, what, what do we value as a family?

Do we value this day of rest? And if so, then we need to fight for it. And so. Let’s talk a little bit about that because you and I were talking earlier about this idea of fighting for a Sabbath rest. How does that show up in your life? This fighting for it?

Melissa: I will speak to right now. So depending on what my schedule [00:19:00] is for the week, if I have, if I start to have that feeling… So that feeling is I need some time away. If I, if I am starting to feel like that, like, it kind of feels like you want to escape somewhere. Um, if you’re feeling like your nerves are a little frayed, you are starting to disinigrate from wholeness.

Rachel: Yes.

Melissa: So what we typically do is we then want to cope, you know, so we’re going to go to food, beverage, Netflix, maybe something else. I don’t know. Those are my top three that I would go, go through. Actually, mostly it’s going to be sugar. It’s going to be sugar and binge-watching probably hallmark channel.

Rachel: Oh my goodness. You just described my night last night It’s been a stressful week and I totally did this.

Melissa: [00:20:00] But it could be shopping for somebody. It could be something else, you know? So when you start to have that feeling, you’re like, ah, something’s not right. Okay. I’m not really getting my needs met and I’m, I am moving out of wholeness and off of my center. And when I know I’m starting to feel like that, I look in my calendar for extended time that week. When do I see? So I’m thinking, okay. I have three appointments that haven’t been set yet. I’m looking at the weather again. Like for me, if I get to go on a beach walk. That was about an hour to an hour and a half. That is very, that’s a deep deposit for me. I, some seasons I’ve been able to go weekly and I went the same time every week. That hasn’t happened for months for me. Now, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had a lot of [00:21:00] spiritual rest. It just didn’t look like that. So I’m like, oh, where can I find that deep, I want to make a deep investment because if I’m feeling like this and I know I’ve got something stressful coming up on my calendar and it’s big and I’m working really hard.

Um, where can I get to for that? I mean, we just, we just experienced a big life transition with dropping, you know, 50% of our family moved out of the house and the needing to be. I’m in a transition. So I’m like, what is that going to look like? My husband’s like, what does that fit? Where our marriage is transitioning…

So, I anticipate what my practice is going to look like is going to transition. Now, if I couldn’t find that big, deep chunk, which thankfully I got, and it was awesome. So this week, I probably have to work six days because next week I’m leaving to speak at a weekend retreat. [00:22:00] Um, so I’ve got some deadlines I’m working at and I’m already thinking it’s, I’m going to sit down in peace and quiet for 30 minutes and be still, and just have some time of solitude and quiet in particular.

I’ve one candle that I light. So the sent is it does that memory work, that sensory memory work, that it, it also gets me there faster. Sometimes you might even see me roll through my kitchens at, at my desk is set up in our kitchen and feeling a little stressed. I might just go over and not even light the candle, just smell it because it’s going to bring me somewhere into rest. If I feel like I’m getting really annoyed. Yeah, let me take a little sniff of my candles, so I can be nice to these humans. So, um, [00:23:00] so that’s kind of how it works for me to find that the time. There was a season of my life, where I homeschooled and I, we only did field trips on Friday.

And for me being around something new, a lot of times it was outdoor, but I got to travel. I call it. Getting off my dot, which for me is I, it helps me embrace perspective on my life and experience gratitude for what I have when I come back. So those are the kinds of ways it’s moved in my life. I’m sure I will have a season of life where it might be that I might say, all right, this year, I’m going to do a 24 hour real scheduled Sabbath. But typically if I take something on, I’ll be like, I’m going to do that this year, because it’s going to line up with this year. It’s not imperpetuity.

Rachel: Right [00:24:00] right. There’s so much gold and what you just said, they loved everything you were just talking about. Mostly because I feel like that just highlights the freedom we have in engaging with God on a weekly basis, engaging with him in ways that are true to who we are in engaging in ways that we know we can connect with him in deep ways. I also was wondering, as you’re talking about you, you practice on Sunday typically, right?

Melissa: Uh, yes. Sunday is now turned into a really good day of rest for my husband and I, at least several hours on a Sunday.

Rachel: So for instance, in weeks like this, where you’re going to be going and talking at a retreat for the whole weekend, will you move your Sabbath practice to another day of the week or will you just skip it? And just…

Melissa: [00:25:00] I actually, um, I probably will end up skipping it because I probably won’t have a block of time. Now, the retreat is, um, the theme of the retreat is prayer. So I will also get a prolonged time in prayer, practicing presence. Even though I’m leading the retreat with which will have, I will be wearing a little working weight on my shoulders, but I’m, I’m sure it will be restorative and I will have an hour or two downtime on the Saturday of the retreat. So I’ll probably take a walk or something.

Rachel: And it also seems like you kind of, well, you mentioned you’re in Enneagram seven, so it also seems like that that like going and speaking and serving and doing that probably like fills you up a little bit more than somebody who’s maybe more introverted and introspective.

Like they might not, they might hear go speak at an event and think work, work, work, work, and you’re like, I’m going to go speak at event. And I get to rest in [00:26:00] that, you know, like that’s going to refuel me in a way that it might not for somebody.

Melissa: Yes. Yeah. It being married to an introvert, even with my husband. He will with Sabbath would maybe look like for him is he will take he power naps, so he will do a combination of a little bit arrest and just laying still, and maybe listening to scripture in his work day, if he’s feeling really exhausted. So, um, he probably, Sabbaths more by getting those little, you know, blocks of time and, but we’re working on, I said, you need to practice stillness. That’s really what your need in your life. It’s going to help you.

Rachel: Yeah. That being still is that’s important. So right now, what does Sabbath look like in your life? Like we talked about the different seasons and [00:27:00] what does, what does a typical Sabbath look like for you?

Melissa: Typical Sabbath time right now is something midweek. So it’s either going to be a prolonged time with a deep, in a deep friendship. So we’re going to have an extended coffee. We’re going to have a lunch, um, some really great conversation again, because I am an extra vert, but it’s, this is going to be with a spiritual friend. So there will be dialogue about what God is doing in our life. So he’s there in the mix. It’s not the same as like self care, right. It definitely is. Um, there’s always a spiritual component. So it’s going to be some block of time, midweek that is very loose where times not rigid and constrained [00:28:00] and pressured. So I feel like. Would maybe could Eaton 30 minutes to an hour. I can have an hour and a half to a two hour lunch or coffee with a friend could look, could look like that, or it could look like, um, that being a dinner with couples because we’re trying to incorporate that. Um, and then we’re going to have a good chunk of time, probably late on a Sunday afternoon, where we have our own personal quiet time. Space from one another, the house is quiet and we just can be still and quiet and enjoy. So I might read during that time, I might just rest and be quiet. Um, but I’m not, my brain is not thinking or working or planning. We don’t have the calendar out. I’m not thinking about time. It’s just as space outside of time, where time doesn’t have that same, [00:29:00] you know, rigid synchronicity of keeping me on track. Instead, I get to go outside of that constraint.

Rachel: So good. Do you and your husband connect in any way during your Sabbath practice? Like you talked about connecting with friends and doing some like individual connection with God and just enjoying that, just enjoyment of, you know, however you want to rest.

Is there anything that you two do together?

Melissa: I would, I wouldn’t really say we’re good about that, but we also work together. We are together like 24 hours a day.

Rachel: Okay. You enjoy that?

Melissa: Uh, yeah, I we’ve always, we really have only had very short segments of seasons of life, where we haven’t worked together and he’s done a lot of officing out of the house.

So we’ve been, our family has [00:30:00] been together a lot. Um, and we enjoy our kids together and we, so we keep a lot of those same rhythms and because I’m an extrovert and he’s an introvert, it’s actually probably best that we don’t practice Sabbath together because our needs are very different, especially I would be very tempted to use words. And he will not want that to happen.

 (Laughter )

Rachel: I love that. You’re like, yeah, this is probably not the best for us. That’s good. Uh, what kind of challenges do you do you run into when you’re trying to practice Sabbath?

Melissa: Oh my goodness. Well, it’s always a desire to get there. There’s always going to be something that wants to interrupt, um, the time that you want to take and when you want to take it. So, I mean, even if I sit down [00:31:00] for 30 minutes, there’s going to be text messages going to come. So I just, I’m going to leave my phone in another space. I don’t hear any ringing. I’m not going to worry about it. There’s no email. So things like that. Um, That’s probably the biggest challenge is people wanting to invade the time.

Rachel: People wanting to invade the time. And that goes back to that, we’ve got to fight for it. Right? We’ve got to say, Nope, this is putting a line in the sand. You shall not cross. Right.

Melissa: Exactly

Rachel: How has practicing Sabbath changed your life?

Melissa: Practicing Sabbath has really helped me understand how to be whole in God’s presence and to identify when I’m drifting from that.

So [00:32:00] instead of trying to cover something up, you know, a coping skill is to design to suppress feeling where the goal part of my goal with Sabbath is to bring those feelings that I’m not enjoying or, um, I need to investigate into time with God. So what it’s really helped me to do is know what that looks like for me and how to get there fast.

So even if I’m stressed out in a situation, I could be in a meeting and someone has said something. They don’t know that I want to cry in the inside, but because I have practiced Sabbath and being in God’s presence so long, I can pray in the moment in a space and experience restoration and not act out [00:33:00] from that happening. Um, I’m not, I don’t have to take that with me out of that situation. So that ability to restore quickly. Um, by being in God’s presence because I’ve practiced being in his presence over a long season of time and understood what can that really look like for me and how has he fashioned me so that I can get there really quickly when I need to, and to, to know, oh, you need, you need some time.

Rachel: For the mom who’s just beginning to practice Sabbath, what kind of tips do you have for her?

Melissa: I would definitely advise to start small. Start small and practical, like 30 minutes, I’d say 30 minute goal being 30 minutes sometime in the week where you know that you can [00:34:00] have silence solitude. If you want to be in scripture or you, or you want to listen to worship music or your, your favorite, you know, cozy beverage, candle, the environment, whatever I would, I would set, um, create a space and a place. 30 minutes and give yourself the flexibility to say it doesn’t even have to be the same day and time. As long as I get the 30 minutes.

Cause it’s more about that practicing of setting that time and the boundary. And then once you start practicing that, then you can say, oh, actually I would rather it be this or…

Rachel: adjust it as you need to

Melissa: change the recipe. First, you follow one recipe and then you start to add all kinds of ingredients to it along the way.

Rachel: That’s a perfect anaology. That’s perfect.

Melissa: Yeah. So I would definitely say the 30 minutes. 30 minutes is [00:35:00] a goal that I think is attainable. Anyone who really wants to prioritize practicing Sabbath.

Rachel: I think that’s so helpful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for sharing all about how you practice it, how it looked in your life in the past. How it’s looked a little bit now, just thank you for being open and giving us a peek into that. Now I know you have your book and I think you have some other resources too, as well on your website?

Melissa: I have all kinds of resources on my, uh, website. I do, I do talk a lot about how to cultivate courage at your life, which, oh, by the way, Sabbath is highly helpful in cultivating courage because when you’re exhausted, you’re definitely not going to be living with courage.

And our courage really comes from God. It’s a courage is a [00:36:00] virtue. So it’s one of those things it’s going to grow as we grow in our relationship. Him. So I define, um, a lot of what courage is and when it’s not. I do typically provide some really practical resources about different ways to cultivate your courage. Um, and my writing is very reflective. So you probably going to hear, um, echoes in notes of spiritual formation and, um, your life and your story and what God’s doing through those.

Rachel: They can find that at your website, right.

Melissa: Website, Instagram, those kinds of.

Rachel: Okay, so tell us what those are, so we can go find your writing.

Melissa: So my website is MelissaCdryer.com. And my Instagram is Melissa C. Dyer, probably underscore. Yes. So you’ll probably see whatever’s hot off the press on Instagram. That’s going to be what’s going on right this second. Yes. [00:37:00]

Rachel: Great. Yeah. So go, go check her out. I’ll put the links in the show notes as well, that people and a link to your book, because I know, I know being courageous is something that we, a lot of us struggle with. And so we can learn from that and apply it. And the practice of Sabbath can help us in doing that as well. So, Melissa, before we close, do you mind if I, I pray for us?

Melissa: That’d be great. Thank you.

Rachel: Father God, thank you so much for Melissa. Thank you for her wisdom and her time and her just her vulnerability and openness as she gave us a peek into what Sabbath looks like in her life. Thank you for the ways in which she encouraged us to start small and to just show up and practice, Lord, so that we can engage with you and grow in that. And Lord, we just ask a blessing on, on her, on the work she’s doing through her writing. And Lord, we ask a blessing on [00:38:00] those listening right now.

I pray that they would through listening to this episode, I pray that they would just be encouraged to start small, being encouraged to allow their Sabbath practice, to ebb and flow with the season of life that they’re in. I pray they, um, become more in tune with themselves and with who they are in you so that they can worship you in ways that are true to how you design them.

And Lord, I just ask that you would go with us and be with us this week as we live out this life that you’ve called us to. And as we reflect you in both our six days of work but also in our day of rest. And your precious and holy name, I pray. Amen. Well, thank you again for joining us, Melissa. I really, really did appreciate it.

And I think this, this conversation has been really beneficial to me. I’ve learned something. I made myself some notes to, [00:39:00] to think about in my own Sabbath practice. And I know our listeners will have learned a lot today, too, from this conversation.

Melissa: Thank you for having me.

You’re welcome.

And thank you for listening to today’s episode. I’ll meet you back here next week. As we continue this conversation of how do we implement a Sabbath practice and a culture that is so enslaved to hustle and hurry. Bye.

Hey, I just want to say thank you for joining me for today’s conversation. I know many things demand your attention. I don’t take lightly the privilege it is to share your time. I want to make things as easy and simple for you. So I’ve linked to all the resources mentioned in the episode in the show notes, and you can always find the link and more helpful information on my website, www.simplysabbath.com.

As we say our goodbyes, let me remind you that what we’re talking about in this podcast is not just another thing to add to your to-do list. This is not another expectation for you to [00:40:00] live up to. It is a gift out stretched from the hand of your creator. An invitation to press pause on walking alongside Jesus in all the things He’s called you to do. And instead the down, across from Him and just be with Him.

It is an invitation to Simply Sabbath.