Nothing Says "I'm Ready for Holy Week" Like Bunky's

Two days ago, I took my Sabbath.

One of the thing my professors drilled into my head in seminary and my pastoral mentors remind me of consistently to this day, is the importance of a Sabbath. A day when work ceases and I can spend time with God. Not time preparing a sermon or time doing the dishes or time folding the laundry, but time communing with God. It's like a Sunday, but for pastors who work on Sundays.

My Sabbath day is usually Friday, but with this week's two Good Friday services and all that goes into preparing for Holy Week and Easter, I knew that Friday was not going to work. So I took my first Monday Sabbath.

My husband just finished his PhD exams. For the past three months he has been studying for 12+ hours a day. For the past three months we have met only as ships passing in the night. We occasionally ran into one another in the hall or the kitchen, we slept in the same bed at night, but otherwise we were two people living different lives in the same house. Those of you in relationships with doctoral students know that this is normal. During exam season, it just can't be helped.

So this Sabbath was a Sabbath of prayer and reconnecting. My husband took a Sabbath with me, and we drove to Madison where we went to the free zoo and walked in the sun.

Between the penguins and the polar bear and the tiny little marmosets, we prayed. We prayed for the season ahead. We prayed for our little baby. We prayed for God's wisdom and guidance as we serve the church and community where we're planted.

We held hands and walked, and when we had walked through the whole zoo, we went to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens (also free!) and walked some more.

We prayed for God's blessing on Holy Week here in our community and around the world. We prayed for each other and for ourselves.

Then we sealed our Sabbath of prayer and reconnecting the way such things should always be sealed: with a delicious dinner.

Enter: Bunky's Café in Madison.

Enter: Gluten free pasta in cream sauce with artichoke hearts.

Enter: Sprecher's Orange Dream soda, perhaps the happiest of all sodas.

And sitting across that table from the man I love, I realized that despite the busyness, the first-trimester sickness, the thousand-and-one things I had yet to do to prepare for Holy Week, the three sermons as yet unwritten, and all the rest, that I was ready for Holy Week. God fed my soul; Bunky's fed my tummy. I was ready.

Are you ready for Holy Week? What do you do to prepare for busy seasons in your life?