Hospitality: Washing the laundry

image credit

Practicing hospitality regularly is important to me, but it's a hundred times more important to my husband. For him it's about extraverting, about evangelism, about building community, about serving others, about training our children. All (except extraverting) things that I value, just that I might treasure the opportunity to practice them once a week whereas he could easily book our calendar to practice them twice a day. So he washes our laundry.
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One of the many lessons we have learned about each other in the past 8.5 years is that I am much more capable of saying "yes" to an opportunity for hospitality if I am not stressed by a build up of tasks that need to be completed in maintaining our home. I find it easier to have guests over if I'm not wondering whether my daughter will have clean socks in her drawer when she needs them. Although it's not directly related, it is part of my job description and more urgent in my mind than inviting SoandSo to dinner tomorrow night. When he runs a load of laundry for me, the incomplete task moves toward "done" (even if I do still have to fold and put it away), making it that much easier for me to add on all the extra tasks that need to be completed if we're going to have guests at our table. He washes our laundry out of love for me and out of recognition that his service toward me makes it easier for me to practice hospitality more often.
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There are other things which I value more than my husband values them, and steps I take to make it easier for him to say "yes". For example, for every improvement in the food we eat that costs us money (Real Salt costs significantly more than store brand), I try to implement a change that saves us money (cloth napkins have almost completely replaced paper in our home) (or at least when I'm not pregnant and energy is more valuable than money). He might not see the value yet of the extra dollars spent on that higher quality food, but he's also not seeing our budget escalating out of control because of it.
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A really important point to take note of: I do not feel, nor have I ever felt that my husband is manipulating me into doing what he wants me to by running our clothing through the washer. I consider rather that he has listened to my concerns and is acting to address them, out of love for me.
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Instead of being upset that someone in your life won't let you spend time/money on what you consider important, take the opportunity to listen to that person's concerns and address them. How can you serve that individual who is so important to you, making it easier for him/her to help you, or even simply allow you, to live out your values? If the concern is money, how can you cut costs? If the concern is time, what chores can you take off of the other person's plate? What is the expense which your husband/wife/housemate/family/whoever considers unacceptable and how can you reduce the cost of it? In other words, how can you express your love by acknowledging and placing a high value on the other person's concerns? It might make it possible for them to give you what you've been asking for.
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Linked with Works for Me Wednesday, Encourage One Another Wednesday

Arriving Early Every Sunday (Part 2)

We plan to arrive 5-15 minutes before our church service begins every Sunday. "Why" was last week; this week I'll explore how we do it, even with preschoolers.
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The first rule is to be realistic. We've tried to adjust our schedule to sleep in later but it never works and never will work if we're not being honest with our timetable. For instance, it takes 15 minutes to drive to our church; we'll never arrive when we want to if we only allow 10 minutes to get there.
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The Mass we normally attend begins at 9:00. Our goal is to arrive at the church between 8:45 and 8:50. We use the earlier time to give ourselves flexibility for things to go wrong. Since it takes 15 minutes to drive there, we try to leave our house by 8:30.
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5-10 minutes are needed for children and husband to brush their teeth and me to clear the breakfast table (I brushed mine earlier). Breakfast itself takes about 20 minutes. So we allow a 1/2 hour and try to sit down by 8:00.
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We need 20-30 minutes for husband to shower, everyone to get dressed, and breakfast to be set on the table. If we use too much time then those who want to eat a banana might have to be satisfied with just their cereal. Based on this, we wake up the girls by 7:30 if they're not already up.
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Husband and I schedule about an hour every day to pray on our own. Practically speaking, on Sundays this is from about 6:20-7:20. The 10 minutes between our personal prayer times and dressing is our flex time, spent on finishing up a Bible study or setting out breakfast or stretching out or picking up things that were left out the night before.
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It takes about 20 minutes from the time our alarm goes off to get to the prayer room. We pray with each other, I brush my teeth, use the restroom; just waking up takes me a few minutes. If either of us drank coffee, I'm certain this is when it would be brewed. This is the portion of our schedule that we really have to be realistic about. We could say it shouldn't take us more than 5-10 minutes, but the reality is that it takes closer to 20. So we wake up on Sundays at 6am to allow the 20 minutes it actually takes.
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When do you arrive at your church each Sunday? When do you want to arrive? If your answer's not the same for both those questions, what would you need to change to fix it? 
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Linked with Works for Me Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday and Modest Monday

Arriving Early Every Sunday

We arrive at our church 5-15 minutes before Mass is scheduled to begin. Our friends think we're crazy, especially bringing our 2 preschoolers so early with "nothing" to occupy them before the hour-long service. This post will explain why we make this a priority and next week how we actually make it happen every Sunday.
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5-10 minutes before Mass begins is a great opportunity to pray; to set aside distractions and focus on the Lord; to get settled in with time to spare rather than rushing in at the last moment as the music begins. With less time I find I'm still thinking about the day's schedule, problems we're facing, changes and plans I'm hoping to make in the upcoming week. I don't focus on worship until we're 5 or even 10 minutes into the service. I've set aside this hour to praise God, and instead I'm thinking about myself. By arriving early I can use those 5-15 minutes before Mass to stop thinking about myself and redirect my thoughts on the Lord.
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Of course those few quiet moments were completely changed when our first daughter was born. An infant doesn't understand what you're trying to do and certainly isn't prepared to help out. I think the infant/young children aspect of arriving at church early (both the arriving and the keeping young children busy) is what makes parents think those 5 minutes or more are impossible. Yet when are children old enough to sit in a pew before the church service begins and set aside their own distractions to focus on worshiping the Lord? How would you make the transition as a family from arriving at the last minute to arriving a little bit early? My husband and I looked at what we wanted for our family "someday" in the future and started the routines "today" that will help us toward that "someday". We certainly brought quiet toys and books and cereal for our children during the first couple years. Our goals for our infants were different from our "someday" goals: 1) Not distract other people; 2) Stay quiet; 3) Become familiar with being in Mass; 4) Eventually actually participate in certain parts of Mass.
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We've taught our daughters that those 5-10 minutes before the service begins are to be used to pray and to sit quietly. Our 5yr kneels and says her own prayer now; our 3yr usually stands or kneels next to me and repeats the words I tell her to say. "Dear Jesus, I love you. Please forgive me my sins and help me pay attention during Mass today. Amen." Sometimes after I've said my own prayer, I'll sit with a child on my lap and whisper a tiny catechesis: an observation about what has changed on the altar since last week and why, a reminder that Jesus lives in her heart, a short commentary on why we sing or why we make an effort to dress nicely for church. Sometimes my husband helps a daughter find the first song in the hymnal. If we weren't able to read the Scripture readings aloud to them beforehand, we might quietly read one of them to whichever daughter is closest and willing to listen.
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Because we made arriving early a routine in our family, our girls expect it, behave well during that time, and we once again get a few moments to pray and redirect our thoughts to the Lord. But now our children also get a few moments to do the same thing. Someday they may even really appreciate the opportunity; our oldest seems to even now.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Modest Monday

Dishes.

I don't avoid dishes on Sundays but other priorities take
precedence and they start to pile up. On Monday morning
I always have some catching up to do.

Dishes are my nemesis. We go through a lot of dishes. I would like to say that my struggle to keep up with them has mostly to do with my lack of a dishwasher, kids too young to effectively wash them all, frequent hospitality, making all our meals from scratch, or something else outside of me. The truth is, complaining about too many dishes to wash is really lame. I need to grow up and wash the dishes without whining. Recently I decided to make a concerted effort to wash each meal's dishes before the next meal is served. That wasn't very successful so I made a new goal to wash all dishes right away rather than putting any in the sink and to wash one or two extra dishes each time besides. So after breakfast, for example, I try to wash all the dishes used at breakfast and a water glass or two used the evening before.
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My goals are always higher than I can actually reach. What's the point of a goal that doesn't cost me any effort?? I don't always get the dishes done within my self-imposed limit, especially when we leave the house directly after dinner and don't return until past my bedtime. But if I reach my goal more often than not, I have made the kitchen a much more pleasant room to live and work in. It's especially nice at the end of a Sabbath weekend with lots of guests. I have quite enough dishes from 24 hours of very little dish washing without tacking on a bunch of dirty dishes from earlier Saturday, Friday, and even Thursday. Even really dirty meatloaf pans really need more elbow grease than soaking. Sometimes soaking helps, but if I'm not going to wash a particular item then I should wash a couple leftover items instead.
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Later the same day I still have some leftover dishes to wash
but not nearly as many because I've washed a dish here and
a dish there along with Monday's dishes. I can finish all this
now before the next meal.

My sink has been much emptier since I cracked down harder on myself! I've even run out of leftover items to wash several times. (The "leftovers" are from my husband's lunchbox when he returns home at 9:30p or brings it in the next day; yesterday's water glasses which we use for a whole day and evening; husband's dinner dishes hours after the rest of us eat dinner; dishes from meals when I was required to leave immediately after; dishes from my lunchbox when we eat somewhere else; empty casserole after a potluck; etc.) I am much happier and glad to recover a little more space to work in.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday

Weekly "Take Home"

Psalm 119:97-104

It's so easy to walk out of church on Sunday morning/afternoon and not remember a single word that was spoken or even one of the Bible passages that were read. We want to meditate on God's Word throughout the day yet find it challenging to remember it for even a few minutes after reading it. It seems most difficult to do on the day set apart to honor the Lord.
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I struggled with this as much as anyone until my husband-to-be started asked me every Sunday what I thought about the homily. He would of course be ready to discuss the Bible readings and everything the priest had said about them (he was prepared) but I would answer something like, "it was really good but I don't remember a single word of it". After a few weeks I started making a special effort during the service to remember just one thing so I wouldn't look silly trying to discuss it afterwards. A few weeks later it no longer took a special effort: I had formed a habit of listening with an ear to remember. Since that meant putting my thoughts about the readings and the sermon into long term memory, I soon discovered that it stayed with me throughout the whole day and often throughout the whole week.
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Now my husband and I have two young daughters and we ask them every Sunday after church what one thing they learned during Mass. Our 3yr old comes up with a good response maybe 50% of the time. Even for a candy reward and even with prompts from me she isn't always ready to participate in the discussion. But our 5yr old has caught on to the activity and can usually come up with something. If she forgot to listen or is feeling lazy she says that she learned "God loves us." She's used that line too many times so she doesn't get her reward until she elaborates a little more (with or without prompts) but she usually is able to repeat something such as who some of the main characters of the Bible readings were. She picks out "Moses" and tells a little about what he said to the Israelites and we think that's pretty good recitation for a preschooler. Other Sundays she pays attention and remembers so well that after going to church with Grandma on Sunday morning she can still tell us something she learned when we ask her Sunday evening or Monday morning.
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What makes this possible I think is having someone to repeat a key thought to shortly after church every week. A spouse, friend, journal, or even aloud to yourself would work fine. Remind yourself before and during church that you will be expected to repeat a key thought, so you'd better listen well enough to have something to say. Write it on a scrap of paper if need be. You don't have to repeat everything: just focus on the one thing to "take home" and allow yourself to "forget" everything else. Holding onto that key thought for even half an hour before reciting back what you learned is enough for your brain to store it in long-term memory. Once it's in long-term you'll find it easier to retrieve throughout the day, making it something you can truly take home and make a part of your life and your relationship with Christ. And once you have the habit of remembering one key thought every week it won't take as much conscious effort to keep the habit in future weeks.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Modest Monday

Children Learn to Interact with Adults in Our Home

Leviticus 19:32

John 13:34

We only have guests over only once or twice a week these days, down quite a bit from our 3-per-week average a year ago. Although that's not counting playdates or babysitting, just the number of times one or more adults and their accompanying children join us for a meal. Hospitality is an important part of our family life and our kids need to know how to relate to everyone we invite into our home. We don't restrict our guest list to our daughters' friends and their families; we expect our daughters to interact with people of all ages and states of life.
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We've let our children know from the beginning that we expect them to greet each person who walks through our door, usually with a hug but at a minimal with a "pinkie wave" (wiggle a pinkie finger towards the person). In conversations with them we've told our daughters that each and every person has been created by God and it is part of our job to show them God's love by welcoming them whenever we see them. This has never been difficult for our older extrovert, but our younger introvert would have preferred at times to hide behind me. When she has been uncomfortable I've tried to work with her to say a hug may be more than she's ready for with this particular person but a wave or a handshake or a verbal greeting is less intimidating and still welcomes the guest into our home.
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Our table setting often puts our children sitting next to adult guests. My husband and I like to sit across from the other adults; it makes for better conversations. Depending on how many people are joining us and who they are, it often works out that children are on the end, between us and the guest, or are sitting across from us and next to the guest(s). What we don't ever do is send our children out to a kids table or feed them at a separate time or a separate meal. We are entertaining as a family and they are part of our family. We're not entertaining a big enough crowd that we can't all fit at one table and so we don't want our children sitting by themselves feeling excluded. A separate children's table is a good solution for certain circumstances but we're never in that situation in our own home.
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Our conversation doesn't center around our children; it doesn't exclude them but it is mostly adult conversation. We include our children by finding common interests and inviting them to share. For example, our garden is visible from our dining room table and if a guest asks about it I might mention that our daughters each have a section they call their own, opening an opportunity for them to share about what they are growing in that section. If a guest works in the medical field I might ask my daughter if she is still hoping to be a nurse or doctor and whether she has any questions about the profession to ask our guest. By the end of the meal, both of our daughters are usually feeling comfortable interacting with our guest(s) and are inviting them to play with their toys or return another time for a playdate. :-) Yet the adults have been able to interact as adults and the children have not been the entire focus of our time together.
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I'm not sure we always achieve the child-adult balance we're looking for but overall I think we've been successful at hosting a wide variety of people in our home. We've had families over, singles, older couples, and families whose kids' ages don't match our kids' ages. Our children are learning to interact with all of them instead of only those who are their peers or the parents of their peers. They are more comfortable in other situations where they encounter our guests outside of our home because they've interacted with them within our home. They know that life and family is not all about them but they are important participants and invited to make a difference.

Read the Bible Before Going to Church

Nehemiah 8:8-11

One of the ways that we focus our attention on the Lord each Sunday is by reading ahead of time some of the Scriptures that will be read in our church that day. It increases the odds that we'll remember those readings for more than 30 seconds after we leave the church and we'll be able to internalize them more fully.
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Does your church use a lectionary? A basic online search brought up this link to the Revised Common Lectionary. Catholics have the readings posted for every day of the year here. Often a church bulletin will include the readings or the theme for the upcoming week so attendees can prepare ahead of time. If there isn't a way to know ahead of time what the reading(s) will be, I've often found that just reading something from Scripture in the morning before leaving for church prepares me to be more attentive to whatever is read aloud while I'm there.
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I'm a visual learner so I'm more likely to remember what is being read if I can either read along or read by myself beforehand. So my Bible study on Sunday mornings usually begins with a review of the passages that will be read in church later that morning. While at breakfast as a family we read the passages again so our daughters can hear them and prepare. It took awhile for them to make the connection: for several weeks our oldest tugged excitedly on my skirt during the middle of Mass to tell me that the priest was reading the same passage I had already read aloud at breakfast! I think she understands now that the similarity is intentional. When I don't have easy access to the readings beforehand I like to be at church with a few minutes to spare. Often there is a book available with the readings in it so I can look them up and quietly read them before Mass begins.
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Even when what I read from the Bible doesn't match up with what is read aloud at church I still benefit more from the readings at church if I've read something from Scripture beforehand. It puts me in the right mindset spiritually. By doing so I've told my brain to focus on things that are above (Col 3:1) and can therefore internalize all Scripture more readily. That doesn't mean my experience at church is always deeply moving, but it brings the experience one step up, closer to Christ.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Modest Monday

Make Ahead Basic Salads

Lettuce ready to be washed and thoroughly dried

What does God call you to? Honoring the Lord's Day will look very different depending on your answer to that question. In my experience He never calls us to stay still. Since we're not perfect yet, there is always something on His agenda for us yet rarely more than we can handle right now. Nearly always He call us to do something manageable, a One Thing which may seem small yet brings us much closer to Him than we ever imagined possible. Right now I'm trying to simplify the meal prep for our Sabbath celebration, kicked off each week with a special dinner on Saturday evening, continuing in the activities we do (i.e. church) and don't do (i.e. chores) on Sunday, and finishing with a simple dinner on Sunday evening. Our Sunday breakfasts have become extremely simple and our Sunday lunches are often leftovers from the night before or "snacky" food (like cheese I cut into cubes and keep on hand in the fridge) but Saturday and Sunday dinners require a lot more thought if I'm not going to spend all day Saturday or hardly any time on Sunday preparing for them and still have them a step up from weekday dinners. This Lord's Day celebration is what God has called me to so I'm not struggling for something outside of His plan for me.

Salad ready for the weekend. Just needs a towel to absorb
water and it'll keep fresh for up to a week (but it will be eaten
long before that deadline arrives!)

Nearly every dinner can be accompanied with a salad. That gives me at least one vegetable; I don't have to worry each week whether it will fit the menu or not; salad ingredients are on the shopping list every week so I never have to wonder if I have them on hand; we eat it regularly enough and serve to guests enough that there are always a variety of dressings available in the fridge. Best of all, I can prepare a very basic salad up to a week in advance as long as I dry the lettuce well. Nothing in the basic salad (usually just lettuce, carrots, pepper) is wet; I serve all other toppings on the side like a salad bar. I keep the salad in a rubbermaid type container so the lettuce doesn't wilt. I can keep it in the container to serve or dump the salad into a nicer salad bowl just before dinner. I always keep a kitchen towel or paper towel in with the salad to absorb any moisture. On the side in nice bowls with lids I keep toppings such as diced tomatoes, shredded cheese, bacon bits, dried cherries, sliced hard boiled eggs, sunflower seeds, croutons, etc. My preference would be to have these basic salads and 2-3 toppings bowls ready to go for the weekend by Thursday or Friday. Unfortunately my family tends to eat them nearly as fast as I make them. ;-) So, I'm trying to make more; trying to start each weekend with two large salads and a separate container of cut lettuce for tacos.

Salad toppings ready to serve. And two little girls always
eager to be included in the picture.

Linked with Works for Me Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Pennywise Platter

Honoring the Lord on His Day

Give yourself permission to let go of things you'd like to do on Sunday if they interfere with what is most important in honoring the Lord on the day set apart for Him. For my family, this means cold cereal on Sunday morning. We have pancakes, eggs, or oatmeal on weekdays and I would love to have something nicer than granola or boxed cereal on the most important day of the week. My husband would love to sleep in, just to have a day of the week that we sleep in (he works all other days), and even more so when we keep our kids up late on Saturday. But as much as we would like to do these things it is even more important to us to attend the particular church service we've chosen and that makes our Sunday morning schedule a little too cramped for special breakfasts or sleeping in. In fact, my husband and I wake up a quarter hour earlier than usual (poor hubby!) and we don't allow time to prepare a breakfast nicer than boxes of cereal, milk, and bananas.
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It was difficult to let go of what we would like our Sunday morning to look like but the morning is much more peaceful now. We had to look beyond our ideals and recognize what is truly most important to us. Trying to fit in my dream, my husband's dream, and the reality of the time available to us just made our Sundays rushed and miserable. None of us were getting what we wanted and instead of making pleasant memories or honoring the Lord we were hurrying our kids and getting ourselves out of sorts. It also helps to remember that this decision is for a season: as our kids get older and don't need us to help them get dressed we might be able to sleep in a little longer or have a slightly nicer breakfast. We might choose for a later church service at some point or we might find the service we attend gets rescheduled a half hour or an hour later than it is now. But whether or not this Sunday morning routine changes much, we need to know the difference between what is most important and what we can let go of. Knowing the difference allows us to adjust the schedule to improve our ability to honor the Lord on His day.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday

Special, Ordinary, and Casual Sabbath Days

One thing that has helped me in keeping our weekly Sabbath pattern is the understanding of the difference between special, weekly, and casual. I get tired out just by reading the biblical descriptions of a Jewish Sabbath, let alone trying to replicate them. We certainly want to remember in our family that the "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mk 2:27). Our purpose is to set apart one day of the week as particularly dedicated to God as a reminder and an affirmation that every day of the week is dedicated to Him. To me it's very similar to our tithe: we give the first portion of our money to the Lord because all of it comes from Him and is in our stewardship care that we may honor Him with every dollar. Yet not every weekend is the same in our family and we wouldn't be doing a service to anyone to insist on a level of formality that pulls us away from our relationships with other family members and friends.
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I suppose when Sabbath or Lord's Day is mentioned the first picture that comes to mind for a lot of people includes china on the table and absolutely no secular activities for a whole day. This might be our ideal but it only happens once a year when our Sabbath is upgraded significantly for a Seder meal. If we tried to dress everyone up and pull out our nicest dinnerware every time we have a Sabbath meal, I don't think we would have a Sabbath meal more than a few times each year. I'm sure it will become easier to dress up the meal more as our children grow old enough to help make it happen. But it is more important for us to have a more casual special meal to set apart the next day as the Lord's Day than to set the standard too high and fail every week.
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Our ordinary (which really means a couple times a month) Lord's Day opening meal is enjoyed in jeans and t-shirts, sometimes even with paper plates. We prefer to celebrate with guests, or as guests ourselves, but actually celebrate it with just our family about once a month. The menu includes wine or juice, bread and maybe cheese, a vegetable, a starch, a main dish, and a dessert. We read the prayers from the Prayers for the Lord's Day booklet before the meal and spend the evening together. The details change from week to week but this is the basic format for what we expect our Saturday evening to look like.
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Sometimes even our ordinary Lord's Day meal isn't appropriate: we're camping or it's a holiday weekend or we're invited to a wedding on Saturday night. Whenever there's an opportunity (i.e. while camping) we gather as a family and say our normal prayers but without the meal. Sometimes there isn't an opportunity for even that but when our "normal" is to dedicate every Sabbath to the Lord, then there's flexibility for leaving out the particular prayers that we use most weeks.
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We have the flexibility to adjust our celebration of a weekly Sabbath according to our schedule because we've identified why we have one and what we hope to accomplish with it. As long as those goals are being accomplished then the details become less important. The criteria for a successful setting apart of the day shifts from the Pharisaical rules Jesus was so critical of to the much more productive question, "Did we accomplish our goal of dedicating the day to the Lord?" That is a goal that is attainable whether we are dressed to the nines with china and crystal or pausing for 5 minutes in shorts and t-shirts before roasting our hot dogs and marshmallows over a campfire.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Modest Monday and Simple Lives Thursday

Keeping a Sabbath Every Week, Part 2

I like to make small changes that last forever rather than drastic changes that last short-term, so I try to select one goal to work on at a time rather than adding a whole bunch of goals to my plate all at once. Um, I'm actually not very good at this and tend to pick out too many goals at once, so do as I say, not as I do. ;-) Anyway, I would be incredibly overwhelmed at the prospect of switching from an attitude of getting extra work done on weekends to an Old Testament-style Sabbath every Sunday.
I was talking with some friends recently who admitted that they would really like to celebrate a Sabbath meal each week but were having difficulties making it actually happen. As I look at ways to keep our weekly celebration and continue to make it more peaceful and enjoyable, I realized we need to keep our long-term goal in sight and make one change at a time toward that goal. My friends aren't likely to jump right into an elaborate weekly routine including a full and formal Sabbath meal with guests and dress clothes and fancy dinnerware. But remembering the real goal they hope to accomplish in their families can make more obvious the individual steps necessary to make that goal a reality.
The goal my husband and I have in our weekend routine is to set apart Sunday as honoring the Lord in a special way. We begin at our last meal on Saturday by saying special prayers and end at our last meal on Sunday with some more special prayers. This gives our family the opportunity to clearly state that this day is special, regardless of what those particular prayers are, what the meal itself is like, or how we're dressed while saying them. Our particular prayers are from the "Prayers for the Lord's Day" booklet (towards the bottom of the page), but the specific prayers are not half as important as saying any prayer setting aside Sunday as dedicated in particular to the Lord and His work. It could be a small portion of the longer prayer from that booklet, or a prayer made up by someone in the family, or a prayer based on someone else's efforts to honor the Sabbath. While the prayers based on traditional Jewish Sabbath prayers call for bread and wine, we've often also passed around cheese with the bread (to more obviously separate Sabbath prayers from Communion), juice may replace the wine, and I've seen water served and the wine/juice omitted, or bread replaced by crackers or tortillas or left out altogether. Some families I know with teenagers have gone their separate ways after the prayer before the meal, but they've made it a part of their family life to always come together on Saturday evenings to say the prayer even when some members of the family have other dinner plans.
Don't let the complexity of what a Sabbath can look like prevent you from enjoying a Sabbath in your home. However short the prayer, however simple the routine, using a special prayer to set aside Sunday as a day to honor the Lord has tremendous benefits for everyone who participates.
Linked to Works for Me Wednesday

No Laundry on Weekends

The easiest decision I've made to avoid our normal routines on Sunday and keep a weekly Sabbath has been to keep the laundry moving Monday-Friday so it doesn't need to be done at all on weekends. Dress clothes are put in the family laundry basket when they're taken off Sunday evening and I prefer to throw in items which are washed weekly (such as bath towels and sheets) on Monday or Tuesday so I have plenty of time to wash them and even put them away before the weekend arrives. It may still take a few days for everything to return to it's closet or drawer but I don't find myself stressed out on Saturday or Sunday evening making sure everyone has clean clothes for the next day. I could also choose to wash everything in one day, but I personally find the drawn-out process more peaceful and more flexible for our family's schedule. It didn't take long to create an expectation in my mind that I would try to move laundry forward a step or two each day, especially early in the week, so that weekends would be free for other things. Once I had that mindset it became nearly impossible to even consider doing laundry on the weekend. This is one small change that works for our family to set apart Sundays for the Lord.
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Linked also to Simple Lives Thursday

Keeping a Sabbath Every Week, Part 1

Exodus 20:8-11

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Mark 2:23-28

We keep a Sabbath every Sunday, beginning with a special dinner on Saturday evening and avoiding our normal work activities until after dinner on Sunday evening. This requires a lot of purpose, a bit of planning, and sometimes extra work on Friday and Saturday, but the rewards make it more than worthwhile. I find it's somewhat like tithing: it hurts at first but I find myself able to do more during the week because I've set apart Sunday in a special way for the Lord and His work, just as I find my money goes further and there's more of it for my pleasure when I've set apart the first portion for the Lord. It's helpful for me to remember that it's not a day of rest (i.e. to sleep in and do whatever I'd like). It's a day set apart for the Lord, a day to honor Him and to worship Him with other Christians. Maybe it would be more relaxing if we didn't regularly have guests over for both Saturday and Sunday dinners, or if my diet (gluten free) allowed me some more shortcuts on meals such as buying a loaf of bread. But I have found ways to make the weekends more peaceful and I'm always implementing new strategies that make a great thing even better. If you keep a weekly Sabbath, I'd love to hear what you do to make it even more fruitful. I'll post (periodically? regularly? weekly?) some of the techniques and recipes I use to avoid my regular work on Sundays while still hosting extra guests, participating in extra activities outside our home, and having extra special dinners both Saturday and Sunday evenings.
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Linked with Works for Me Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday