Blessed Sabbath

For YW last month we made a Journal in a Jar. What it amounts to be is topics to write about in your journal so that your Journaling is more about you and your character, how you think and believe, than a daily travelogue. So I decided that maybe I would start pulling out some of these strips out of my jar and include them in my blog.

My first strip says: Describe your Sundays as a mother or a child.

When I was a child, Sundays were all about how we worshipped. We would get up Sunday morning and go to Sunday School. We would love it because it was a time to see our friends from church. But for us these weren't our neighbors. Since we lived in Flint, Michigan, they were friends that lived all over Flint and the surrounding areas. We sometimes, as children, would invite our friends to come to our house for lunch and then later meet their parents back at Sacrament meeting that was held at 5 pm that evening. It gave us a chance to play and socialize with our friends that we only saw once or twice a week.

If we weren't with others or had others at our house, we would come home and have lunch, and my dad would tell us that it was "nap time". That meant that if we weren't napping we were playing very quietly while he napped. When I was little I hated it! I was trapped in my room for, what felt like an eternity.

As I got older, it was fun! My brother and sister and I would get out our fisher-price little people stuff (we had the house, the barn, the school,the airport and the ferris wheel, and the parking garage) we would divide everything up into piles (ie. the buildings, the people, cars, animals, etc.) and take turns picking out which things we wanted. Then we'd put together towns! We played for hours down in the family room in the basement. Good times!

After Charlie out grew playing with us, Sarah and I would do the same thing with Barbies. We loved using anything we could find around the house to make our Barbie house! It was fun and we really used our imaginations. We played for hours and hours.

I also remember having the missionaries over for dinner, many times. That was always a highlight of our Sundays.

Then we went to the 3 hour block! I just couldn't believe that they wanted us to go to church for 3 whole hours! Were they kidding? Actually, I totally see the wisdom in that! More people can utilize one building!

By the time I was a teenager, I wanted to take a nap! I loved coming home from church and being able to relax and spend time with my family. That was the thing I missed most while I was a missionary!

But I appreciate my parents for making Sunday be a "special day". That set the tone for the Sabbath for the rest of my life.