Vanessa's Blog and other random stuff: An Anderson Kind of Sabbath

I am a workaholic. My husband is a workaholic. We are also a family that has been called to church work. It's weird, really. Because I don't think God is a workaholic. Of course, he's pretty efficient--you know, creating the entire universe and all of its contents in just 6 days. However, God's also a big fan of "the Sabbath". I mean, it even made his top 10 list back in Exodus.

So, my question is this: if we are made in God's image, have a true desire to follow his rules, and have human bodies that physically require rest and relaxation, why is it so hard to just stop and take a day to enjoy life--free from the stress and duties of every other day of the week? I think it has something to do with guilt--as well as an innate and deep desire to help those in need.

All that said, the last 3 days have been awesome! I have to smile when I reflect on the amazing ways that God knocks on this thick skull of mine. He commands us to take one out of every seven days to rest. Does the Anderson family ever do this? No, not usually. So, while I'm sure I am reading WAY too much into this (not to mention that it all sounds a bit narcissistic) I think it's awesome that the God of the Universe would choose to send 19 inches of snow (second highest single-day snowfall in the history of Amarillo, mind you) with hurricane-force winds to our little corner of the world, out of love?

All roads in and out of Amarillo have been closed for the past two days. Schools have been cancelled, businesses have been forced to close, and even the Texas Department of Transportation suspended activity for over 24 hours "because snow removal efforts were futile". Wow! Now, that's something!

Yesterday was amazing! The sun was out. We had five to six-foot snow drifts on our property. All the kids were home with no option of being anywhere else. And this was some Grade-A prime snowball making snow that we had just sitting there begging for some fun!

Oh, don't get me wrong: Dave and I had a very long, and at times, heated discussion about what he and I both needed to be doing that day. You know, he's that "behind-the-scenes" guy at the church. The guy that manages to "miraculously" get all the little things done so that everything runs smoothly. He's also the guy that gets yelled at when things don't go so smoothly--like showing up at church days after a bonafide blizzard to find there are still mountains of snow blocking all the entrances. He experiences significant stress from such things.

I'm certainly not immune from the stress either. I worry about my patients being in pain or having problems that need to be attended to--you would be surprised what kind of mischief people can get into, and the eye injuries they will sustain when left cooped up for too long at home. I mean, these are rednecks we're talkin' about here! These are the same folks that somehow think it's a good idea to hitch themselves to skis behind a 4-wheel drive pickup. They are also the same people that think it's awesome to fry a turkey on their back porch while drinking excessively.

I find it funny that God basically had the audacity to look down and mandate a Sabbath--for the Anderson family, and all of the other workaholics out there in the Texas Panhandle. So what did we do on our divinely mandated Sabbath out here in the sticks? We made memories, of course!

As I reflect back on yesterday, I realize that in 20 years nobody is going to remember whether or not the snow was removed from the parking lots at my office OR the church. However, the six kids that pummeled Dave for hours with snowballs are going to remember this day for a lifetime! It makes me smile to think that years from now (hopefully a lot of years--'cuz Dave and I still have a really long bucket list) these kids are going to be sitting around at our funerals remembering the time "when we had that huge blizzard, and Dave Anderson spent the whole day playing Madden 13 and having a snowball fight with us".

I think this is exactly the kind of stuff that we are supposed to be doing in life. We have six whole days every week to work. We need to take one whole day every week to pummel our kids with snow. We need to lay exhausted in the yard after being ambushed by half a dozen said-kids. And we need to laugh. . . A LOT!

Yesterday, we did just that (and I have the pictures to prove it)! And, I'm glad we did. I'm also glad that God gave us a legitimate "out" to be able to do what we did. Today, it is "hi-ho, hi-ho, back to work we go", but we are relaxed and well-rested from our fun in the snow. We are ready to tackle whatever the day may hold.

And, I am kind of secretly hoping that God will take care of all that crazy stuff, too. I mean, He created the moon AND the sun. Pretty sure that He has the ability to crank that sucker up to high and melt all that crazy snow out there so we can get about the business of getting about our business.

So, I'm looking forward to more miracles today (praying specifically for 70 degree sunny weather, of course), and excited about the potential for countless numbers of Sabbath Days in the future!

May you have a post-Sabbath kind of day, too! Oh, and enjoy the funny memories that were created this week at Chateau de Anderson!