The Beginning - Dave

So when Mary first brought up the idea of participating in the Sabbath I wasn't quite sure what to think. "The Sabbath". It just sounds weird, immediately bringing forth images from "Fiddler On the Roof" with everyone scrambling around to get things done before the sun sets. That was definitely not for me. After reading a few chapters on the practice and talking it through I decided maybe we should try it. After all, how bad could it be setting aside a day to just take naps, read, worry about nothing except how I'm going to spend time with my wife? And then some of the realizations hit me. We had laid down a few ground rules. No TV, no internet, nothing that would allow us to fill our time up but not force us to relax and let our brains de-stress. This is when it dawned on me the gravity of the situation. No TV I can do, but we're doing this on Sunday. Yes Sunday, the day the NFL plays. That would mean no football, no Bears, no Colts, and worse yet we weren't doing internet. I wouldn't even be able to keep up with games online, let alone check my fantasy football stats. Hmm. Now I'm not some crazy fantasy geek but football is one of the only sports I'll arrange my schedule to watch. Wasn't quite prepared for that. We came to a compromise. I would only pick one game a week to watch. It had to be chosen beforehand and if it didn't happen to be on cable, oh well. I didn't think too much about this as the Bears are a dumpster fire and the local team is almost as bad. I hadn't really been watching too much anyway. This was about two weeks ago. Before it occurred to me that not only the playoffs but the biggest game of the year was coming up. There's nothing like a little test just to see how committed you are. If I miss it though, I miss it. I'm not scrapping this thing just to watch grown men in tight spandex pants manhandle each other.
So despite my apprehensions, and there are some, I'm pretty excited about this. It will be interesting to see how it affects areas of our lives that we haven't even considered. It's daunting to think about how I now have one less day to get things done around the house, run errands etc. At the same time it's exciting to think that I now have an entire day that I have permission to read and nap. We'll see how long it takes to get rid of the guilt resulting from our protestant work ethic. This is going to be an interesting and rewarding journey.