Dear 21-year-old Rachael,
Congratulations on landing your first “big girl” job: a high school teaching position in Houston, Texas! You’ll see in time that God knew exactly what he was doing when he directed your steps from Michigan to Texas.
The transition from college life to work life is a tricky one. After spending your entire life until this point devoted to school, you will shift into a new normal where you are in greater control of your time and finances. There’s excitement with these new decisions and the potential for pitfalls.
If you’re not careful, your work will consume your life. Like many things in life, it won’t happen all at once. Little by little, you’ll choose work over friends, rest, and fun. It will start with the decision to stay late in the classroom on weekdays. The choice to walk out of school at 4 p.m. feels like a wise one until you feel the guilt of leaving work unfinished. You can’t leave stacks of ungraded papers on your desk, so your 4 p.m. leaving time will become 5 p.m. But even at 5, you won’t be finished with all your responsibilities. Inevitably, 5 becomes 6 p.m.
Feeling weird having the last car in the parking lot, you’ll choose to continue working on the weekend. Saturday and Sunday will no longer be rest days; they’ll be fresh opportunities to show how much you care about the work.
As the years go on, the strangest thing will happen. You’ll begin to resent the very work you sacrificed so much for. You’ll feel angry when your students don’t give 110% in class. They have no idea how much you’re giving up for them and you’ll feel like they aren’t showing you the proper respect your work demands. You’ll allow your fleshly spite to come through more than Christ’s love.
As a gal who grew up in church, I know you’re familiar with the Sabbath, but allow me to refresh your memory. The creation story in Genesis 1–2 describes how God worked for six days designing the heavens, the earth, and all that fills the earth. He called his work good and was pleased with what he made. Instead of continuing that work another day, God opted to sit the seventh day out. He consecrated it as a special day, establishing the practice of the Sabbath.
Can you take the Sabbath as a suggestion and choose to power through a seventh day of work every week? Of course. You have free will. But should you? Not if you want to stay healthy.
The word Christian means follower of Christ. If you want to follow him (and I know you do), then you need to behave as he behaved. Since God rested, you should too.
You are not inexhaustible. You are a finite being whose body was formulated to work best when receiving regular rest. Don’t fight nature. Leaning into how God has designed you will allow you to work at your best.
Don’t feel guilty about working less. Pausing work for a day or two isn’t lazy. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about your work. Taking a Sabbath rest allows you to acknowledge the limits of your human strength. Further, it shows that you depend on God, not yourself, to meet your needs.
It will take some shifting of priorities and routine, but, once you get your Sabbath figured out, you’ll never want to go back. You’ll wonder how you made it so long without one! I’m excited for you to discover just how beautiful and restful the Sabbath is. It nourishes my physical body and spirit each week.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Rach, but work will always try to have a hold on your time. Since you’ll be working the rest of your life, it’s time to learn how to put proper boundaries in place. It won’t always be easy, but it will be so worth it. Your yes to God and no to work is part of what will keep you spiritually healthy in the long run. Spoiler alert: you’ll be going on the field in several years, and the work/life balance thing will become even harder. Get your boundaries set up now and thank me later.
With love,
30-year-old Rachael
What is your pro tip for creating the best Sabbath experience?
