A Dream Come True

When I was a child, my parents never washed Sunday dinner dishes.  After filling up on pot roast, mashed potatoes, jello, and rolls, they would inevitably stretch their arms, pull an enormous yawn and announce, "We're going to go take a nap.  Get the dishes done and Don't. Wake. Us. Up.  See you in a couple of hours."

I've often thought of those Sunday afternoons longingly.  I don't wistfully remember squabbling with my siblings until the dishes jobs got parted out (No, you got to wipe the counters last week.  It's my turn this week!) or taking three hours to finish what my mother could knock out in thirty minutes.  I always thought I lived with unreasonable tyrants who abused their parental monopoly on force.  I deserved some rest on the Sabbath, didn't I?  I had worked hard sitting through church and needed to recover curling up with my favorite book.  Washing dishes wasn't exactly on the program.

Instead, I've thought wistfully on my parent's ability to finish their dinner, clear their plates (maybe) and go take a Sunday afternoon nap.  What a luxury, to have enough time to spend an hour or two on Sunday to nap.  Instead of spending an hour washing the dishes they had just spent the previous two hours getting dirty just in time to hustle the children off to bed, they got to nap while somebody else washed the dishes.  What was that like?

I am here to tell you today that it is wonderful.

I just crawled out of bed from a beautiful, luxurious hour and a half nap.  I didn't wash a single dish, wipe up a single crumb, or sweep up a single dropped pea.  After finishing our turkey pot pie, Brandon announced to the children that we were going to take a nap before marching up the stairs and doing exactly that.

I'm sure the children squabbled about jobs, complained about tyrannical parents, and wondered when the resting part of the Sabbath was going to show up.  But I didn't hear any of it.  I was tucked into my bed, wonderfully unconscious of anything but a full belly, warm bed, and whatever dreams were parading past my closed eyelids.  Even if the children didn't get to rest on the Sabbath, I certainly did.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for setting a good example!