The Transforming Pause: a sabbatical

Winter finally came to The Little River Cottage this morning, five inches of snow overnight and another few predicted. We haven’t yet opened the two pairs of snowshoes under the tree, perhaps because the ground was bare but also perhaps just because we’ve just been extending out the days of Christmas through to the fifth of January. A book here and a new pair of slippers there, a thrifted wool blanket here and wooden art from a local artist there. Christmas without children is different but it does not have to be without mystery and magic all the same. Perhaps we will open the snowshoes today and christen them with a tromp in the snow.

I have been preparing our home and my heart for a sabbatical. I’ve never taken one and perhaps it doesn’t make much sense to have one smack in the middle of graduate school and birthing another book into the world. But as I looked ahead at the next few years, it seemed that if I waited to take one, I’d enter it on empty instead of on full, and I wanted to enter a sabbatical on full. I’ve had plenty of years of doubt and times of breaking and now is not one of those times. There has been grief this past year, sure, piles of it. But my heart is in a good and healthy place with the Lord, and I wanted joy to be the path of this journey instead of obligation and burnout.

I don’t plan on talking or writing much about my sabbatical plan either now or later, nor do I plan on talking or writing much through it either. When I asked a few people about their experiences, there was a general consensus that holding what God does in those quiet hours and days close was a good thing. Those whose work can carry the whiff of performance in that it is done in the public eye—even if the heart is not bent toward performance—said part of the discipline and the goodness of the time away was to not come back with stories of what God did but instead just let what God does make its home in me. I resonate already with this counsel and so I don’t plan on offering much in the way of how-to-do-one or how-mine-went.

"Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms. "
- Walter Brueggemann.

I will say this, though:

A friend suggested working through The Artist’s Way and I plan on doing that.

Open Air, a spiritual formation non-profit, crafted a sabbatical plan for me and will be coaching me through it.

I will not be on social media or in my general email inbox or text messages during this time. I have few commitments for which I’ll need to keep showing up, but generally I will not be reachable during this space of time. My plan is to have long periods where my phone is off and then have do-not-disturb on for all but a very few people, namely my husband and a few other purposeful individuals. My main objective for this sabbatical is to quiet the voices of others and tune into the voice of the Spirit who lives inside me.

I debated about whether I wanted to stay away from Sayable during this time and have gone back and forth in my spirit about it. So what I’ve decided is that, in the spirit of paying attention to the Spirit, I’m going to led Him direct that. If I feel like showing up here and writing, I will. If not, I won’t.

2022 and 2023 are going to be very full years for me. Between graduate school, the release of A Curious Faith, the writing of another book, a few exciting trips (one of which you may be invited along on ;) ), and more, I feel a sense of joy and stability in my vocation. I have worked for a very long time, over 20 years now, to do what I get to do full-time, and I’m grateful to God for every bit of that labor and the harvest season I get to be in now. There have been years of quiet, fallow seasons, and years of fighting tooth and nail to wrangle the things in my heart and head, and years of famine and blight where it seemed all had died, and there have been years where the vocational goodness feels too good to be true. That’s a gift and it all belongs to him, not me. Sabbatical is my way of reminding myself that I belong to him and not to me.

"Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing."
- Eugene Peterson.

My plan is to begin on January 6th, Epiphany, and go through April 17, Easter. If you’d like to pray or support me through this, I would deeply love the company of your prayers. Here’s what I know to ask prayer for:

That I would endure. In the absence of a lot to produce, I can tend toward numbing behavior. Shelly Miller, who left this earth far too soon, wrote, “Extravagant wastefulness in time might prove the most productive thing you choose for yourself,” and I find this such a helpful mindset going into this time. Please pray that I stay present in the quiet and solitude, and don’t drift toward unhelpful crutches.
That I would rekindle a joy of making. Creating things and working with my hands has always been a place of deep rest for me, but I haven’t done much of it during the mind-heavy work of my vocation. Abraham Heschel wrote that, “If you work with your hands, sabbath with your mind. And if you work with your mind, sabbath with your hands,” and I plan on taking this advice to heart. Please pray I would find a lot of joy in the art of making.
That I would appreciate beauty for beauty’s sake.
That my time with the Lord would both reveal and confirm, that there would be an ebb and flow of both relinquishing myself and receiving from him.
That the times I need to be checked in to schoolwork or work for the publishing of A Curious Faith, I would be able to do it mindfully and swiftly, in and out.

Thank you, friends. Truly, thank you.

P.S. A Curious Faith is 40% off at Baker Book House for preorders. It’s $11 bucks instead of $18! I would love for you to support them by preordering there, if you can!