Alright, alright, I know there is a band called Taking Back Sunday but let’s get real, it’s catchy and true: I have taken back my Sundays! Let me backtrack a bit for you so this all makes sense. Growing up I juggled a lot of weird jobs, I was a: limousine cleaner, a paper mill tour guide, a proshop girl, a paper mill roll wrapper, a nanny, a hostess, an Abercrombie employee and more… in order to fund my way through college, I was always working more than one job. That constant juggle led to long stretches of work and seldom weekends off. I began to covet my weekends off and always wanted to do something, go somewhere, live it up, because I knew that they didn’t come around often.
After college, I started my job at Target which left me working every other weekend and I still cherished those few weekends off and realized how very quickly they filled up. Well, it would only make sense that after diving head first into entrepreneur ship, I landed in a job that had me working weekend after weekend. My Saturdays were spent shooting weddings and my Sundays were often filled with sessions, my weekends off were just a fragment of my imagination. At first, it wasn’t so bad – it was a lot better than wearing red and khaki and filling up the shelves at Target, but I soon realized how much I just missed a Saturday sleeping in and Sunday naps after church.
A little over a year ago, I made a shift: I took back Sundays. Drew and I had fallen away from going to church, in fact, we had struggled to find a church we loved after living in our village for a few years and we were constantly on the go during the weekends. I realized that with him working Monday – Friday and me filling my weekends with work, our quality time together was increasingly limited and I hated it. I had heard about entrepreneurs closing up shop on Sundays but I had so many doubts: would my clients be mad, could they shoot during the week, would it limit the amount of work I could get done? All of my fears never came to fruition because as soon as I set that boundary: no work on Sundays, people respected it. The truth is, boundaries aren’t going to work unless we put them into practice.
It sounds simple, silly even, but I covet our Sunday’s together. We go to church, nap on the couch, lay out by the river, take the dogs on walks, eat Jimmy Johns and purely disconnect. The minute I took back Sundays and claimed them as our day as a family was the day that I said, “My marriage, my little family, is more important than work, emails, or chasing a dollar.” Having our very own sabbath day has been something that has totally changed the way our weekends look and in the best way possible! What sort of boundaries can you set to put family first and to reaffirm the fact that everything else can wait, it’s time to be present!
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Good for you. Without God you are nothing. Family is so important also. You need time for each other. Love you insite to life
LOVE this, something I really need to start doing! I would love to hear what your thoughts are on day-after wedding workflow. Every season I feel more & more pressure to get sneak peeks/blogs up asap, which feels like it requires working on Sunday. Now that I think of it, this should probably be a dear jenna email. 🙂 Anyway, happy Monday!!
Viva la Sunday! Happy recharging!
Viva la Sunday! Happy recharging!