Yesterday we were on air. This time next week we will be in the air. (Smooth link or what??) Or still in the airport if there’s a delay. Annoyingly, as we’re only taking carry on bags there are various things we might like to travel with that we can’t. I like to have my leatherman with me (bit like a Swiss Army knife but shinier) for those just in case moments when something really needs cutting or pliering or a small piece of wood desperately needs attacking with a ridiculously teeny tiny saw, or a bottle needs urgently opening. But I can”t take it on board for obvious reasons.

Neither can Ella take tweezers (I can’t imagine there has ever been, nor ever will be anyone who manages to hijack a plane by storming the cockpit with tweezers. “Divert this plane or I swear I WILL pluck your eyebrow Captain. And, I’ll only do one of them – think of that!! You will look ridiculous. Then I’ll puncture the auto-pilot.”)

We will hopefully do better than when we last flew and managed to wander out of Brussels airport when we were only meant to be swapping planes there. A little awkward and still not entirely sure how we managed it. Also had our passports stolen and I got food poisoning and we were only away for three weeks. There are SOOooo many more things to mess up over 6 months.

One thing that has been interesting is that it wasn’t until today that we both felt we had actually finally fully “stopped” – that the slowing down process had actually finished and the constant feeling of needing to do the next thing/be in the next place/worry about the next worry which has been a constant subliminal shadow for so many years had at last come to a stand-still. That’s not because we’re not doing things now and it’s not that there aren’t things to remember and worry over (“don’t wander out of connecting airports” being just one of my mental post-it notes to self). But the juggernaut that is the last 20 years has slowly, slowly braked to a rest.

Rest is one of the four words we have been challenged to associate with what it is to “Sabbath”. Stop. Rest. Delight. Contemplate. And we were wonderfully reminded of the idea of Sabbath yesterday. Shelley, who heads up a Jewish charity and who’s a friend of Ella’s from school texted to ask whether our taking this year as a sabbath year was due to 2015 being a “Shmita” year.

What, you may well ask, is one of those? Those of you who spend a lot of time in chapter 25 of Leviticus (and come on, who doesn’t love to? Huh? Huh?) would happily tell us (or alternatively turning to Wikipedia we find) that in the Jewish calendar, every seventh year is a Shmita year, where fields are left to rest and things are not grown. So that the world itself takes a sabbatical, as per God’s request in the book of Leviticus. And 2015 is designated as a Shmita year.

During shmita, the land is left to rest: you can’t plough it, sow into it or harvest it, but you are allowed to water it, fertilise it and weed it if needed. But it, like us, needs to rest. And resting – a part of what it means, I think, is to allow God to do his thing. The ground will be refreshed and the plants will come again after a sabbath year.

When you dig down into many of the laws God gave in the Old Testament the thought that lies behind it (unsurprisingly) makes pretty good sense. To take a sabbath – to allow things to rest – to restore balance, to remember that a lot of what we allow our lives to be embusyed by (l like to confuse the spellcheck) could be laid down and then, after a time, taken back up – or maybe left lain down as new opportunities have a chance to come into view.

Our sabbath year has coincided with a biblically based sabbath year. I like that. If you happen to have a good Jewish friend, wish them a happy Shmita. (And as debts are supposed to be cancelled during a Shmita year if you happen to owe them a tenner, now would be a really good time to go visit.) But for us, even though we’re resting the “to do list” is extending.

I’m just off to pluck my eyebrows in case I don’t get the opportunity for a while.