Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

by Shelly Miller

Joy that comes from playfulness wasn’t common in my household growing up. As the child of an alcoholic, the natural emotion of joy was lost in the fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Moments of fun almost always included cloud cover on my emotions as a way of avoiding what I assumed would be inevitable disappointment. I am in a slow recovery process with what Brené Brown coins in her book Daring Greatly as foreboding joy.13 When everything is going well, my emotions tell me (wrongly) that disaster is coming, so I brace myself for the worst. Instead of taking my chances with a zip line, I imagine myself as a quadriplegic and my family shackled with caretaking. Once I opted out of a hula dancing event hosted at my best friend’s fortieth birthday celebration, hiding behind my camera to capture the memory instead of participating. A physical reaction of anxiety made my chest heavy and legs wobble when I thought about making a fool of myself dancing in a hula skirt in front of girlfriends.