A day of rest...

What is so hard about taking the day off on Sunday? Is it not the "Day of Rest?" Yet, I find it incredibly difficult to keep my mind on resting when there is much to be done. Tonight, for example, I am already on to the coming week. Checking off the tasks that need to be completed, calculating the amount of money needed for certain projects (I am terribly inept at such things), wondering how I will fill the hours that will come inevitably.

This week I travel to San Francisco, I need to book a flight to Wash., D.C. (for a late November business trip), post a BIG web programming project for the WU web site, and generally try to sustain the business, day in, day out. It's a complex process that brings many rewards, lots of challenges and, sometimes, even joy. Rest? Nah. Unless ...

If rest is simply a function of NOT being at work, well, I do that on a regular basis, everyday as a matter of fact. But rest is not just that, it is more, something of a state of mind. I have more trouble getting that right. I think, maybe, if I could get my arms around this "rest as a state of mind" thingy, I might just get more out of the experience of being in business.

What if, I made decisions based not on fear, but faith. Faith in others, faith in myself, faith in, yes, I'll say it, God, faith even in faith, maybe that would be the beginning of rest. My Sunday. Nah, Couldn't be that simple, could it?

And what if I greeted each task with the same jocular atttitude I have when I visit my hilarious Canadian friend, Jeremy, knowing that at the end of our visit many serious subjects would be discussed with a wink and not a few laughs. Profound, still serious, but infinitely easier to swallow. Yes, that might be rest, too.

Finally, I should learn another lesson from Maggie, my dog (read yesterday's post), when she chases her ball in our back yard. I have never seen a faster, more strenuous chase, more work as it were, as she leaps with joy to each new challenge: each oops-the-ball-rolled-into-that-big-old-bush moment turns into pure elation.

Rest. Faith, humor and joy, now that is something I can work with.