During Sunday’s sermon, our Minister Emeritus shared his favorite quotation from Jesus: “Be not afraid.” The minister then ran through a litany of categories that most of us fear: change, stasis, sameness, differences, life, death, knowledge, ignorance, and so on.
He didn’t specifically mention dental surgery (nor did Jesus, as far as I know), but since I was 24 hours from my first scheduled gum graft, I took the message to heart anyway.
It’s so easy to let our fears rule us, whether those are truly profound fears such as terminal illness and national security or truly trivial fears such as temporary physical discomfort. My dentist first recommended that I see a periodontist seven years ago, and I’ve known since then that I’d eventually need to undergo gum graft procedures, but I managed to put it off year after year because I was so apprehensive.
The problem was that neglecting to schedule the procedure created a different fear: the fear of regular dental cleanings. First of all, the cleanings generate pain that might be alleviated once my gums are treated; but secondly, I always felt so abashed to have to admit that no, once again, I had not taken the dentist’s recommendation to schedule a periodontal appointment. Finally, two months ago, he instilled in me a new fear: the fear that my teeth would start falling out if I didn’t attend to this matter.
The gum surgery is now 48 hours behind me and I feel fine. Yes, there was a fair amount of discomfort during the procedure and a lot more as the Novacaine wore off throughout the afternoon. Yes, I’ve been hungry for the past two days since there’s so little I can eat during the short-term healing process. And yes, my left cheek looks like it is storing a golf ball.
But none of it is as bad as my fears led me to believe. “Be not afraid,” I should have told myself earlier, and then all of this would be done by now. But I was afraid, and so I’m undergoing the discomfort now that could potentially be seven years behind me by this point.
This experience, plus the minister’s reminder of Jesus’ words, made me think of the other fairly trivial things of which I’m currently feeling afraid. One significant source of apprehension in my life right now is seeing my kids grow older. At the ages of nine and thirteen, they seem to me to be at the absolutely ideal ages from a parenting perspective: they’re fun, happy, resourceful, independent and confident.
By this time next year, Tim will be in eighth grade and we’ll be learning about the systems and inner workings of the public high school, a setting I dread simply because it’s so unfamiliar to me. At nine, Holly embodies all the merriment of girlhood, but as Caitlin Flanagan’s controversial new book, Girl Land, and her frequent NPR interviews remind me, all kinds of scary things potentially lie in her path as she approaches early adolescence. In another sixteen months, our lease runs out and we’ll need to find another place to live. My parents and parents-in-law are healthy, but that won’t last forever. And are the kids’ college tuition funds in good enough shape at this point?
So much to be afraid of, and yet really nothing to be afraid of except the normal progression of a blessed life. Gum surgery isn’t pleasant, but not being able to afford or have access to necessary dental procedures is surely worse.
As I prepared to leave the periodontist’s office after the procedure, a woman in the waiting room smiled sympathetically at me. “You look really uncomfortable,” she said.
“Well, not uncomfortable enough to merit putting this off for seven years,” I admitted. Be not afraid. I’m not sure the singular experience of getting through a gum graft is enough to allay all of my daily anxieties, but it’s a lesson I’ll take to heart nonetheless, and try to put to good use going forward.
Showing posts with label minister. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minister. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Monday, November 2, 2009
Keeping the Sabbath
Recently our minister gave a sermon on the topic of keeping the Sabbath, a tradition that dates back to the opening pages of the Old Testament. Our minister rather humorously described the evolution over the past four generations from “the Holy Sabbath” to “the Sabbath” to “Sunday” to “the second half of the weekend.”
I think often about how best to organize my time. For me right now, the challenge is not getting necessary tasks done but fitting in downtime, specifically downtime for reading. I have mentioned often that for me, the symbol of luxury where time management is concerned is reading the Sunday New York Times. If I get through the Times before the next Sunday’s edition arrives, I feel that I’ve been generous with myself, and fit a little decadence into my week. Most weeks, this doesn’t happen. I fit in everything else – housekeeping, cooking, time for my children and my husband, writing and other forms of work, exercise, community involvement, visits with friends – but the one item I never seem to get to is whatever I would do if I didn’t have to be doing anything else.
So over the past several years, I’ve given some thought to how I can create a Sabbath for myself. I’m not looking for a full day of rest; I’m trying to figure out the best way to ritualize a small pocket of time every week when I’m not writing, exercising, housekeeping or focusing on anyone else’s agenda. That’s not to say I need to be alone; I love the idea of a family reading hour, or – as happens frequently during the summer – finding my time while watching the kids swim or play on the playground. The point is just to find time that’s free of all my usual daily list items.
In the past, Sunday afternoons have seemed like a good time to try to do this, and so have Sunday evenings. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to be fluid in my definition of Sabbath. Maybe it isn’t even Sunday. But beyond than that, maybe it’s not a singular event. Maybe Sabbath – time of rest – can be best defined not by what I'm doing but what I’m taking time off from doing.
For example, I always try to be done with housework by dinnertime on Sunday; it just seems too much like drudgery to be scrubbing countertops and vacuuming in the final hours of the weekend. But that’s often when I sit down to the deskwork I didn’t do the previous work week.
Moreover, I’ve often acknowledged to myself that I could have more downtime on weekends if I did some of the housework during the week – but I feel strongly about preserving my weekdays, when the kids are off at school for seven hours at a stretch, for writing and other tasks related to my professional life. If I am to consider myself a nearly full-time freelancer, as I do, I have to use weekdays for work, not for housecleaning.
As far as errands, in general I fit those in after the kids get home from school, because then I don’t feel like the driving-around part of the day is eating into my writing time. My daughter usually opts to come with me, so it’s a chance for us to be together for us as well. I used to be opposed to highly opposed to shopping on Sundays: again, to me that was an important part of the traditional Sabbath model. But recently, to my surprise, I’ve found myself in something of a shopping mood on Sunday afternoons. It’s not like we’re hitting the mall or the big box stores (though I don’t know why I say that judgmentally, as if my kind of shopping somehow has more integrity that that); it’s that Sunday afternoons recently have found me happy to take a leisurely stroll through Whole Foods or an unhurried trip to the drugstore. Yesterday, my daughter and I had fun together perusing the post-Halloween shelf for items to send in a care package to my niece, who unfortunately was sick and couldn’t go out on Halloween this year. CVS on a Sunday – by choice and not necessity? By a traditional Sabbath model, or even by my previous standards, that would sound heretical. Yet I liked the mellow pace of it, knowing we were in the middle of a free afternoon and could take our time as we examined the witch candles and plush black cats.
So now I’m starting to think Sabbath might, at least for now, mean more a state of mind for me than an hour of the week. It’s reading the newspaper during Sunday afternoon football; it’s focusing on writing while ignoring the laundry on a Tuesday morning; it’s shutting down my computer on a Saturday morning so that I can throw myself into housework without the temptation of checking my e-mail. Keeping the Sabbath is a good idea, and I do suspect for me it will continue to be an evolving model. Someday I might devote entire Sundays to reading or spending recreational time with my children and be somewhat appalled to think I ever used to buy socks on Sunday afternoons. But for now, this works.
I think often about how best to organize my time. For me right now, the challenge is not getting necessary tasks done but fitting in downtime, specifically downtime for reading. I have mentioned often that for me, the symbol of luxury where time management is concerned is reading the Sunday New York Times. If I get through the Times before the next Sunday’s edition arrives, I feel that I’ve been generous with myself, and fit a little decadence into my week. Most weeks, this doesn’t happen. I fit in everything else – housekeeping, cooking, time for my children and my husband, writing and other forms of work, exercise, community involvement, visits with friends – but the one item I never seem to get to is whatever I would do if I didn’t have to be doing anything else.
So over the past several years, I’ve given some thought to how I can create a Sabbath for myself. I’m not looking for a full day of rest; I’m trying to figure out the best way to ritualize a small pocket of time every week when I’m not writing, exercising, housekeeping or focusing on anyone else’s agenda. That’s not to say I need to be alone; I love the idea of a family reading hour, or – as happens frequently during the summer – finding my time while watching the kids swim or play on the playground. The point is just to find time that’s free of all my usual daily list items.
In the past, Sunday afternoons have seemed like a good time to try to do this, and so have Sunday evenings. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to be fluid in my definition of Sabbath. Maybe it isn’t even Sunday. But beyond than that, maybe it’s not a singular event. Maybe Sabbath – time of rest – can be best defined not by what I'm doing but what I’m taking time off from doing.
For example, I always try to be done with housework by dinnertime on Sunday; it just seems too much like drudgery to be scrubbing countertops and vacuuming in the final hours of the weekend. But that’s often when I sit down to the deskwork I didn’t do the previous work week.
Moreover, I’ve often acknowledged to myself that I could have more downtime on weekends if I did some of the housework during the week – but I feel strongly about preserving my weekdays, when the kids are off at school for seven hours at a stretch, for writing and other tasks related to my professional life. If I am to consider myself a nearly full-time freelancer, as I do, I have to use weekdays for work, not for housecleaning.
As far as errands, in general I fit those in after the kids get home from school, because then I don’t feel like the driving-around part of the day is eating into my writing time. My daughter usually opts to come with me, so it’s a chance for us to be together for us as well. I used to be opposed to highly opposed to shopping on Sundays: again, to me that was an important part of the traditional Sabbath model. But recently, to my surprise, I’ve found myself in something of a shopping mood on Sunday afternoons. It’s not like we’re hitting the mall or the big box stores (though I don’t know why I say that judgmentally, as if my kind of shopping somehow has more integrity that that); it’s that Sunday afternoons recently have found me happy to take a leisurely stroll through Whole Foods or an unhurried trip to the drugstore. Yesterday, my daughter and I had fun together perusing the post-Halloween shelf for items to send in a care package to my niece, who unfortunately was sick and couldn’t go out on Halloween this year. CVS on a Sunday – by choice and not necessity? By a traditional Sabbath model, or even by my previous standards, that would sound heretical. Yet I liked the mellow pace of it, knowing we were in the middle of a free afternoon and could take our time as we examined the witch candles and plush black cats.
So now I’m starting to think Sabbath might, at least for now, mean more a state of mind for me than an hour of the week. It’s reading the newspaper during Sunday afternoon football; it’s focusing on writing while ignoring the laundry on a Tuesday morning; it’s shutting down my computer on a Saturday morning so that I can throw myself into housework without the temptation of checking my e-mail. Keeping the Sabbath is a good idea, and I do suspect for me it will continue to be an evolving model. Someday I might devote entire Sundays to reading or spending recreational time with my children and be somewhat appalled to think I ever used to buy socks on Sunday afternoons. But for now, this works.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)