A Weekend Well-Spent

Leaf-and-twig dragon houses: the sort of thing that happens when my kids go outside.

It's Monday, and I'm looking back on a weekend well-spent.

Last weekend, Adam was gone to an all-day church retreat, and the weekend before that, I was gone to an all-day church retreat. The retreats themselves were good things, but the lack of a weekend break for three weeks in a row was making us both a little jittery. So all last week, we promised ourselves that we would Take This Weekend Off, I Mean, Completely OFF.

And we did. We went to church, of course, but we didn't stay for the potluck. We made sure the kids had regular meals, but we used a lot of paper plates. Adam read halfway through a doorstop of a book. I finished a long, striped, knitted shawl. The kids played outside a lot. We all watched Mythbusters, and all the flat surfaces of the house grew their own collections of abandoned tea cups and coffee mugs.

It was so needed. By Friday night last week, my brain was moving as stupidly and thickly and numbly as a mouth shot full of Novocaine. I remember, on Friday night, thinking, Should I read? . . . but why would I do that? Should I knit? . . . but why would I do that? I guess I'll go to bed, because then at least I won't have to notice the fact that I seem incapable of summoning up enthusiasm for anything.

It was a little scary, actually, how numb I felt. I guess that's what happens when you get really, really tired. Not the insanely sleepy tired of new parenthood, or the bone-deep exhaustion after illness, but just the emotionless grey drizzle that comes after there's been all too-much emotion, and you haven't had space to process and assimilate it.

But the weekend worked. Sometime yesterday, I paused my knitting to look across the living room at Adam (who was intelligently reading his doorstop on Kindle, rather than paper), and said, "This was such a good idea. I'm so glad we did this." And I let out a really deep sigh, a good sigh, a clear-all-the-oxygen-out-of-your-lungs-and-feel-refreshed-and-refilled sigh.

And now it's Monday. And it's another week. But I'm ready to face it now. I'm even excited about some of the work it holds. I'm even okay with climbing the mountain of housework that builds itself over the course of A Weekend You Take Entirely Off.

Sometimes - not always - but sometimes, you just need to stop for a bit.

And then you go on.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell