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.

It’s done. For the last few years, whenever we’ve mentioned the amount of stuff we have accumulated over the last 28 years I’ve said.. “Well, when we leave I’ll put a sign at the end of the road that says “house contents sale” sell the lot and leave.. And now we’ve done it.. It was exhausting. Emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting. 300 people came over the course of 4 hours.. It was like being burgled in slow motion. At one point you couldn’t get in or out of the house past people with armfuls of our belongings queuing in the hall to pay. And despite the clearly labelled signs on virtually everything, over and over again they asked me “How much do you want for this?”

How much do you want for the huge wall clock that for 20 years has told you that it’s time for school or to start tea or helped you count the minutes until a friend arrives. How much do you want for the little armchair that you have prayed in, cried in and daydreamed in each morning? The little one by the Aga that friends have confided secrets in and God has kept you company in while you made supper for a stranger? How much do you want?
The truth is I don’t really want anything at all for ‘it’ because there isn’t a price that reflects what ‘it’ meant to me.. But there is something I want more. I want it more than the things around me and more than the security of knowing what tomorrow will bring.
So I make up a price for the desk, the chair, the clock and the dress. I give away the books and the pictures and the rugs and the lamps. And more that more that goes the better I feel, the less I have the more I have to give.
Ella xx

In january this year Jon and I chose a word for the year.. Complete. Complete as in “Make my joy complete” or “Complete in Christ” or as in “I have actually completed something”. Complete as in ticked off the list, finished, accomplished, done, achieved, pen down, walk away, complete. Hopefully not as in ” I made a complete fool of myself.” I don’t know about jon, but I think I had in mind a kind of reminder to myself that I should stop worrying over how much there is still to do and take pleasure in finishing the thing I was doing without rushing on slap dash just to get it done. I think it began with noticing how many things I had begun but not finished… Chairs that were half upholstered, curtains almost hemmed, pieces of furniture painted on 3 sides, and a nagging feeling of being rushed all the time.. No time no time. And then somehow by March what with one thing and another life suddenly slowed down. And one day there was time … I’m still not sure how it crept up on me but there was time.. Time to go through the photographs that I had stuffed into a basket for almost 30 years. Photos of the children, of life as it was when they were children.. They are all grown up now. And that era is complete.. I have spent so long saying when the chikdren grow up… And suddenly here it was. Time. So we spent time slowly going through the basket, laughing, crying, remembering and sorting into two small shoe boxes. One to keep and one to give to the children, and a huge pile to throw away.. That chapter has ended. Complete.