For two consecutive weekends we’ve arrived to Friday without plans. We each had separate goals or hopes in terms of achievements, but an itinerary did not exist. A “free weekend” is pretty rare concept in our life as we frequently have some sort of engagement to attend to, be it family gatherings, tickets to an event or even plans to go to a lakehouse or two. Since moving in, these past few weeks have been the most “free” as we’ve ever experienced, and in many ways they were more rich with blessing than if we would’ve tried to cram something in.
A call from one of the Husband’s cousins resulted in a spontaneous dinner visit, which was splendid. I enjoy conversation with her, and when not pressed within a larger family setting, we got to hear so much more of what is going on in their lives.
This morning we were graced by the children with an extra hour’s sleep before heading off to church, in the company of one of my favorite people in town. After doing a bit of work in the kitchen, I took dinner down to my cousin and his wife and new baby and ended up staying for some delightful conversation. Truly, we live much too close to not see each other more often.
These seem like relatively simple and small things for weekend life. But oftentimes when we cram our calendar with visits and stopping here, there and everywhere along the way, the entire 48 hours flies by and we arrive at 8pm on Sunday simply exhausted. But this weekend we saw more people who aren’t in our current rotations than the previous 10 months combined. And the kids made it to bed on time and we got to sleep in.
I love order and reason, so I’m a believer in schedules and calendars. But I think perhaps we need to implement a weekend sabbatical rule. Once every 7 weekends we plan to plan nothing, and allow things to spontaneously rise to the top. Even if it’s painting the shutters, going to the park or even staying in our jammies most of the day while enjoying a movie and baking cookies – plenty of small joys are festering below the surface, just waiting for us to clear a space for them to bloom.
There are some things, like a date with KLR, that if we don’t put it into the calendars, they won’t happen. But there are other things that never go into the calendar and will never happen if we don’t clear it. Fortunately for me, this week includes a bit of both.