We are almost to the end of June! In some ways it feels like it has zipped by, but it has been a very FULL month. I threw a graduation party, have gone to cheer my boys on at our Quail Valley swim meets, flag football games, days at Murrells Inlet with sisters and friend, a Ben Rector concert in Charlotte with my daughter Katie, an impromptu trip with my sister and mother to Eastern NC for an overnight, working part-time for Abundant Graze (a local charcuterie company), seeing Hamilton up in Greenville, SC, Father’s Day at Isle of Palms, and starting a Young Adult Women’s Summer Book Study reading Jennie Allen’s Find Your People. Beautiful whirlwind. I have desperately needed a break from my house, the rhythms of the school year, and am grateful that I could have some life-giving adventures.
I was telling my husband this week that when I am homeschooling, I feel like 78 percent of my emotional capacity is taken up and that I have to very carefully parse out the other 22 percent. School ended a month and a half ago, and I am feeling an emotional expansiveness happen that I haven’t felt for a long time. I can say “yes” to more things that I enjoy, more spontaneity, and more investment in activities that actually give back to my emotional tank.
“I’ve woken up to the fact that periodic, replenishing soul-Sabbaths will be wise, and that a deep soak in Scriptural passages underscoring the love of Christ is in order this month”. I read that quote in this beautiful blog post, and those words resonate as I continue meandering on my summer path. In past summers, soul-Sabbath looked like quiet, restorative practices to refuel for another year of homeschooling young children. Personal retreats, planning, fiction at poolside. Now that season is coming to an end: my kids are older and will be in full-time school this fall. I don’t feel this deep core need for reordering my house + soul + calendar like I have in the past. I am soaking in another neglected core need for adventure, intuition, people, parties. I feel the release of summer angst to “get ahead and prepare”, and am leaning into the joy of taking off my educator hat and simply being mom.
A friend of mine, along with her mother, owns a local charcuterie business, and I began working part-time for the two of them. It feels rejuvenating to work with my hands, slicing fruits, vegetables, and cheeses, running errands for them, and helping set up graze tables. Just this past week we did a baby shower, a graduation party, a retirement celebration, and a wedding reception! I loved the adventure to going to beautiful homes, a boutique hotel, and an event venue I hadn’t heard of. This little job is becoming another avenue of freedom, joy, creativity, and autonomy that I have been craving.
Soul-sabbath is restorative and can look like a million different things. Sometimes we can look back to who we were before we had lives filled with heavy responsibility to find what brought us joy. The years pile up, and we can become disconnected from what makes us feel most like ourselves. In my twenties, I travelled frequently, went to concerts, made spur-of-the-moment social plans, read piles of books, went to coffee shops, journaled my days, snapped photos, played cards, and went to movies. I was always up for an adventure. These ways-of-being are still me. Some get pushed to the back for years (decades?) because of the constraints of my season of life. But who Aimee is, still is, and sometimes I have to look for her. For me, soul-sabbath is often a search for myself again, the unique desires and quirks that God planted in me, that get buried under duty and obligations.
All of Summer’s stereotypes feel like a metaphor for my truest self, and she, in all of her sticky + spontaneous glory, will always have my heart.
“ For me, soul-sabbath is often a search for myself again, the unique desires and quirks that God planted in me, that get buried under duty and obligations.” - well that made me tear up. I feel so much of what you wrote deeply.