Sunday, mid-morning. I am sitting out on my deck, still clad in pajamas, a cup of coffee by my side and the sweet tunes of The Lumineers, The Head and the Heart and Bon Iver flitting out from my phone. In front of me are cut wooden scripted words that I found at Jo-Ann Fabric the day before: Love, Peace, Faith, Dream and Hope. I am painting them black, to match the iron decor in my room, with the plan of hanging them interspersed with pictures. I lose myself in the brush strokes, carefully applying the paint to cover every spot of bare wood - and I realize that I feel something: relaxed. And that I don't feel something: guilty.
You see (and those of you who know me well will agree), that I am nothing if not busy - all the time. And while part of me loves it, part of me also gets sucked in to never really having a free moment. It's go, go, go - all the time, and even when I seem to be relaxing, I often feel like I am running away, escaping for a brief moment, the lingering feeling of guilt that I could be doing something else. But this morning? None of that, and it felt glorious and freeing.
In my last blog, I kind of coined a new term for myself: holystic living. Wait Jessica, you spelled holistic wrong. Well yes, and no. The word holistic means (according to Mr. Webster):
relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts <holistic medicine attempts to treat both the mind and the body> <holistic ecology views humans and the environment as a single system>
And in this day and age, while the idea of holistic living and holistic medicine often include some vague sense of spirituality, it rarely equates with the vision of spirituality I hold dear to my own life. Again if you know me, no surprise, you know that I am a devout Roman Catholic, and this aspect of faith imprints every aspect of my life. One of our calls within the Christian faith is to attempt to be holy, to a life set apart, focused on others, and striving each day to imitate the person whose life our faith is based on. To me, real health, real wholeness, includes physical, emotional, financial, mental and spiritual aspects. Hence, holystic living! Now don't worry, this blog isn't a platform to proselytize and convert, but as this is something that is incredibly important in my own life, I will be sharing it.
While this might seem like a tangent from my opening, it actually isn't in that I've found out the hard way that when we let busyness and stress take over our lives, all these areas above suffer. And I've reached a point where I've said, enough. I'm ready to get back on track. And they say (whoever "they" is) that the best way to hold yourself accountable and stay on track is to share your journey. And the best blogs are the ones that have a solid focus. So here we go, the focus of this blog will be to discover wellness and make better choices. I'm hoping to be honest with some of the choices I've made that aren't the best or healthiest and how I am trying to do better. And I'd love for any of you to share yours too.
The title of this blog comes from the idea that Sunday is to be a day of rest. In the book of Genesis, after the Creation story, God rests on what comes to be known as the Sabbath. And when the Ten Commandments are given, one of them is to preserve the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Traditionally, no work is done on the Sabbath and in the days of our grandparents, Sunday was a day when stores were closed, when families gathered and leisure was enjoyed. And while not everyone reading this may be Christian and hold Sunday in high esteem, all of us need to take time apart to rest and refuel, and our culture makes it increasingly difficult to do this. My hope is that if I can balance out the rest, then hopefully I will be able to take back my Sunday and enjoy it, guilt-free. Join me?
