How to Build a Habit of Rest - Part One

1. Choose a busy time of year. 

(Maybe August?)

2. Ignore your work and take some time to rest and worship. 

(Ideally for more than a day, because most of us will take at least 24 hours to relax our tight shoulders. In severe cases, it will take a week. And, yes, you will probably have to leave your house.) 

3. Repeat the next year. 

4. And repeat the year after, until it becomes a habit or routine. 

5. To reinforce the routine, include your little people. 

Many parents have found that if you do something two years in a row, the children will say, "Every summer, we always..." If the children love it, you won't be able to quit even if you want to. (Case in point, I've attended a womens' retreat in August several years, and loved it, but have struggled to make it a routine, because I don't have my childrens' reinforcement for that event.)

Okay...so these steps were written half in jest. But I'm partly serious. 

From the time I was an infant, my parents took me to the Brethren Camp Meetings held at a camp near our home every year. This event was nine days at the end of August to Labor Day each year and consisted of church services every evening and services all day on both Sundays. Family attendance was never debated, we were always there. 

As dairy farmers, I remember many days of rushing crazily in from the barn to get ready in time for camp meeting. With school often starting over that time, and garden produce to can, it was a frantically busy time of year, but I never remember missing camp meetings. Even in the year my sister was born during camp meeting week, a few of the family managed to attend.

When I married and left the Brethren church to join my husband's Mennonite church, Ed made it a priority to attend the Brethren Camp Meeting each year. We both enjoyed connecting with friends each summer. 

The year I was hugely pregnant with my second child, we considered not going, but I woke up Sunday morning and felt great, so we attended both the morning and evening service and enjoyed a campfire supper with friends. But I counted contractions during the last service and gave birth a few hours later, and had the fun of calling friends with the baby news and hearing "But we saw you just last night!"

I don't remember what year we started camping overnight on the second weekend of camp meeting, but I know that our oldest child was little. We rented one of the rustic cabins which was only a couple steps up from tenting, but at least had electricity and mattresses. Our children loved playing with their cousins, riding bikes, and playing on the water slide. Ed and I soaked in the messages and fellowshiped around the campfires. The children ran until exhausted, which allowed us to tuck them into bed and enjoy quiet conversation on the cabin porch. Camp meeting became a highlight for all of us.

But one year, as I packed food, bedding, towels, diapers, bikes, and clothes (so many, many clothes), I said, "I can't do this next year." I don't know how many children we had by that time, but I was exhausted. Camping anywhere takes a lot of packing, but combining camping with church services meant many more clothes and towels, and I couldn't keep doing it. But I also couldn't end the camp meeting tradition, so we compromised. 

We only lived twenty minutes away, so several days on camp meeting week, I'd pack up the children, bikes, bandaids, and lunch, and we'd spend the day at camp meeting. The children would ride bikes with their cousins and friends while I sat under a tree with the babies, doling out water, band aids, and lunch as needed. Then in the late afternoon, we'd go home, where the babies caught a short nap while everyone showered. Then Ed would come home from work, and we'd all head back to the evening service. It worked wonderfully and became our new camp meeting tradition. 

After Ed's death, I thought that now that the children were older, and I'd have help and didn't have to work around Ed's work schedule, maybe I'd try staying overnight at camp meeting again. Apparently someone heard our idea, because I was told that an anonymous person had offered to pay for a cabin for as much of the week as we wished to stay at camp meeting. And so began a new tradition. 

Each year since then, on Tuesday of camp meeting, we move into the cabin with a mountain of belongings. It feels a bit ridiculous to be this close to home and stay in such a rustic dwelling. When I'm packing, I feel like I've lost my mind, but now I have children old enough to help. 

Yes, we bring about every stitch of clothes we own. Yes, I move half my kitchen to camp including the toaster, coffee pot, Instapot, and slow cooker. Yes, as soon as I arrive I remember something I forgot (this year it was trash bags) even after writing meticulous lists. But when the children help unpack the van, throw their sleeping bag on their bunk, then jump on their bikes, and I split some kindling, light the first campfire, settle into my lawn chair underneath the immense oak trees, and exhale - then I know the work is worthwhile. 

This year was our fifth year spending almost a week at camp meeting. Life looks different than five years ago. Now my older children aren't riding bikes with their cousins. They are getting up early and going to work, then dashing to the shower house before joining us for supper. 

But I still have a few children in the bike gang, and we've learned routines over the years that make life at camp simpler. We often invite family and friends to join us for meals and walk to the church service smelling of campfire smoke. Most days I go home to feed our pets, do a load of laundry, and pick up whatever we may have forgotten. Each day I enjoy walks with other moms, daily Bible studies, and long talks on cabin front porches. I soak in sunrise views from the porch while contemplating last night's convicting message. For a few days, I forget about the tomatoes in my garden or the pears that I could be canning. 

We stay up far too late fellowshipping so come home with a sleep deficiency. As usual when camping, unpacking is worse than packing. The laundry heap is atrocious, with smoky church clothes and grass-stained jeans, but it is all worth it. And by year five, the tradition is so firmly grounded that I'd have a family mutiny if we didn't go to camp meeting. 

I've been thinking of this yearly tradition of rest and how life giving it has been to me - even though it contains some hard things. When thinking of the list from the beginning of this post, here are things I've learned.

1. Choose a busy time of year. 

(Rest doesn't wait for us to not be busy. It needs to be planned and fought for. Even on crazy August days.)

2. Ignore your work and take some time to rest and worship.

(For a mom with children, work will always be there, but the opportunity to spend time with your family may not.)

3. Repeat the next year. 

(There are seasons that you need to adapt or change your routines. So don't be stuck on doing it only one way. But also, don't give up striving for rest.)

4. And repeat the year after, until it becomes a habit or routine. 

(Building a habit isn't complicated. It just requires consistency. But consistency is hard when you are tired.)

5. To reinforce the routine, include your little people.

(Most of us need accountability, even to do the things we want or need to do.)

I know that some of you may not be able to spend several days at a camp meeting, and I hope this doesn't make you feel discontented. We all have different seasons and circumstances.

When thinking of building a habit of rest, I realized that camp meeting wasn't the only tradition of rest that my parents gave me. This post has become long enough, but I want to write about two more restful traditions - maybe ones more important than camp meeting, traditions I often under value. 

So I'll be back. In the meantime, I'd love to hear if you have fought to make a restful tradition during busy seasons. Do you eat a leisurely family breakfast the Saturday before school starts? Or set a "family game night" once a week in December? Are there ways that you prioritize worship and fellowship during busy seasons?

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