13 Jun Slowing Down to Savor Summer

This is what I wrote in my journal last Monday: “It’s an amazing thing to have nothing (absolutely necessary) to do right now. While the girls have swim team practice for an hour each day, other than that we can pretty much go at the pace we please. Lord, help me not to feel the need to do anything at all and just enjoy this lovely break from routine.”

Since we finished school two weeks ago, our schedule has opened up and our pace has slowed down. We can go to the pool – or not. We could have friends over – or wait.

The benefits of long, lingering, unhurried mornings are manifold. I can sip my coffee slowly and savor the aroma and flavor as I wish I always could. The kids can become completely immersed in play – whether building a fort, magna tile or lego creation, or pure imaginative play.

We can take a full hour for read aloud time or carry out our devotional time as long as we want – not rushing through any questions that the kids bring forth but taking them to explore them and pray without any concern for the time. We can spontaneously invite friends over or do a little cleaning or cooking project.

It is therapeutic as a mom to feel this freedom for a season. As a homeschooling family, from September through May our schedule is quite full – though we do always leave some margin time – without it I inevitably wither and self-destruct. But still…quite full, as is the case for most families.

Beauty and healing often open up to us in times of silence and rest. In a culture that presses us to go until we drop from exhaustion, we may come to believe the lie that silence and rest are our enemies. That a slower pace of life is really just being lazy or lacking in vision or passion somehow. That constant movement is equal to a well-lived life.

But those ideas are wrong.

Embracing the Gift of Rest

Contrary to popular belief, silence is not our enemy, but our friend. It is only in moments of silence that our thoughts can be processed more fully and our heart can turn towards contemplation and prayer.

When we rest, we refuse to crown productivity as our practical god and we crush Satan’s lie that our worth lies in our achievements rather than in our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

As our pastor during our first year of marriage told my husband and me, “To take Sabbath each week is to say to God, ‘I trust that you are the one who causes all good things to grow in my life.'” It may seem counter-intuitive, but often the greatest growth springs up from the soil of rest and solitude.

Take a few minutes to check out your calendar for the remainder of the summer season. Do you still have some dormant days (or *gasp* even weeks?!) that are currently wide open? Perhaps before filling those days with activity, give pause and prayer to that open, white, empty space before you and your family.

Choosing to leave some of those hypothetically quiet days as actual quiet days may be the best gift you give to yourself and your family this summer.

What steps can you take this summer to slow your pace and savor the life that is happening all around you?

I’m rolling around the corner to middle age, about to place my hand upon my 40th year and do you know what I can’t stop thinking about? Today.

The gift of every single breath. The pure joy of knowing Christ and being known by Him. And these amazing people that live with me and live all around me.

My kids are 10, 8, 6, and almost 4. These are sacred, hallowed days of motherhood. They are not always going to be crawling up into my lap begging me to read “just one more book,” play with them in their homemade fort, or saying, “Momma, can you push me really high on the swing?” or “Can you teach me how to bake those cookies you made last week?”

As a good friend of mine likes to say, “Babies don’t keep.” Let’s slow down our pace, enjoy extra time with our little ones, and savor these sun-baked, lazy days of summer. Fall will be here before we know it!