Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Shabbat Ep. 4 | How to Have a Fun Day of Rest for the Whole Family (with the Allsmiths)

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Shabbat Ep. 4 | How to Have a Fun Day of Rest for the Whole Family (with the Allsmiths) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams Podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and this season is all about crafting a family-friendly day of rest.
• 0:20
  We'll talk about the biblical idea of Sabbath, hear testimonies from different families, and also discuss practical ways to do this with kids. Make sure you give us a follow so you don't miss out on future episodes. All right, guys. Well, welcome into the Family Teams podcast. April and I are here with Blake and Chandler. They're good friends of ours. And how are you guys doing today? Doing well. Doing good. Yeah. Yeah.
• 0:50
  it's 4 20 on friday night so we're about to enter into the topic that we're talking about today so that's right we're all very excited yeah we both we're just talking about we cannot wait to rest it's almost there and blake and chandler are days away from welcoming baby number six into the world yes very excited for them and you guys are um so like tell us the ages of the kids uh right now
• 1:20
  Yeah, so our oldest is 10, then eight, six, four, two, and next week. All right. So you guys can tell just from that why we're talking to Blake and Chandler about how to have a day of rest. So I was just telling them that one of our biggest questions we get is, how do you do this with young kids? And we want to really get practical about the challenge that younger children have.
• 1:46
  create for trying to recover or have a day of rest. And there are real challenges. And so we want to be in a community that's talking about this. And our family has experimented and tried various things. And I've really enjoyed watching Blake and Chandler over the years as they have been working this out and trying to figure this out. And so I think this would be a good arena to have this. How do you do this in a family-friendly manner? So
• 2:11
  So, we're in a series of podcasts about how to do a family-friendly day of rest. And so, I'd love for you guys just to talk for a bit about, you know, kind of the backstory for you about getting into a day of rest. Like, why did you decide to try this? How did it go initially? Let's kind of take us back. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:35
  Yeah, I think we first started it, we heard a sermon from Matt Massey at North Star Vineyard in Cincinnati, Ohio. He gave a sermon that I can summarize pretty straightforward as, hey, did you know that the Sabbath is in the Ten Commandments? That's pretty much the entire sermon. He's like, hey, it's in the Ten Commandments. Maybe we should at least think it's a good idea. He wasn't even saying you're required to do it. He's like, but it's got to be there for some reason. Why is it there? That's the commandment.
• 3:04
  And so we went home and we're like, I mean, if it's, it's in the 10 commandments, maybe we should give it a shot. And it was, don't murder. Yeah. We don't do that. Yeah. We didn't have children yet. We were both working full time and in somewhat time intensive jobs and to do a full 24 hour rest went very poorly for us. I found it at least I found it very stressful. I started like having heavy breathing.
• 3:32
  and just difficulty coming down. And it kind of highlighted
• 3:37
  for us initially, just how dependent we were on keeping things going. I don't know, that was, it was less of something life-giving initially. It was actually really difficult for us. And then over time it became addictive. Maybe something similar to Skyline Chili here in Cincinnati. Where the first time you have it, you find it repulsive, but over time you just can't stop having it. And acquired taste. Yeah, and then when we met you guys, we kind of saw, you know, we met you when our
• 4:07
  oldest, Everett, who's 10, when he was maybe two months old. And so when we came and saw your family doing it, that really shaped what the family Sabbath looked like for us, because that was kind of our first exposure was you guys doing that. Cool. How about you Chandler? What was that initial journey like for you trying to get into this? Yeah, I mean, I loved the idea of it. My growing up, my family had like practice Sabbath, but it was like,
• 4:36
  we go to church early and set up and work all morning and then go home and like watch football. And that's kind of all it was. So I was really excited about like learning how to do it more intentionally and maybe more restfully than setting up chairs at church.
• 4:54
  Yes. Well, you know, a lot of times when people hear us talk about this, the first thing they think about is the typical Sunday tradition of a kind of a normal Christian family.
• 5:06
  And you guys grew up in families like that, as did April and I. And so, in fact, when I thought about this, it wasn't something I was excited about. I just it sounded like, yeah, some kind of weird obligation. I don't know how people you would talk about, but like there's a I want to talk for a little bit here just you guys process.
• 5:26
  At least initially when you heard this, why didn't you, I'm sure there was some of that association. And I know for me, there was very little of that association. But, you know, yeah, at first, I think that's there. Yeah, I mean, I definitely grew up thinking that the Sabbath day was...
• 5:42
  If that word was ever even used, it was used in reference to Sunday where you go to church and then you might have like a nicer meal for lunch that day. And then you take a nap and then go back to church that night. That was kind of like a Sabbath day. And it was also, I grew up in a town where everything was closed on Sunday. So it made it kind of easy for that to be the day where you just kind of did nothing. You might be bored or something like that. Yeah.
• 6:08
  I remember the only Sabbath rule that we had was that we weren't allowed to play with friends. And it was like, aww. The one day a week we can't hang out with our friends on the block. Yeah, I would say Sabbath was characterized for me as things were not allowed to do. Yeah. And specifically it was, yeah, not hang out with friends. Although I will say once we got a boat,
• 6:32
  when I was in middle of elementary school, that became the day that we would go out on the boat. And that suddenly became a little bit more exciting that we would do that on Sunday. But I would say that the, yeah, early at church setting up big brisket that my mom would put in the crock pot starting at like five in the morning. And then we'd chew on that for a while, take a nap, reading comics, generally, or at least in the winter time or a era of boredom.
• 6:58
  was kind of the association. But when it was introduced to us in that sermon, it was introduced of, hey, did you know that typically this was on Saturday? And for whatever reason, that gave me a new category. I'm like, this could be whatever we want it to be. And I actually, I almost broke that association because Sunday, it actually altered Sunday to be more interesting to me and replaced it with the Saturday thing that suddenly I could be more creative with.
• 7:24
  That's interesting. That's a really good way to put it. Cause I definitely feel like we had that experience as well that, um, and we did try to do a day of rest on Sunday for a number of years. And it did once it, once it shifted to Saturday, yeah, it did feel like whatever associations I had from my childhood, yeah, they didn't map onto this new thing we were trying. So, yeah.
• 7:46
  Yeah, that's an interesting reality. So I'd love to hear more about so let's talk about what was it kind of any early challenges early wins as you guys. So you, you know, you had Everett, you know, you only had one baby and then of course you started to bring on more and more as you guys think about. Yeah, the first few years you were trying this what were some of the things that you remember from that season. Yeah, I mean.
• 8:11
  like big surprise. I think having, when you're in that, like really physically, I don't know, intense season of parenthood, when like all your kids are five and under, it kind of, sometimes it felt like it was more work to try to not do anything than to, you know, you're still like, well, I'm still changing seven poopy diapers in the morning. And we're still like, we still have to do all the same thing. So, um, I think there was a little bit of like,
• 8:37
  probably just like shifting our, at least my like mentality of like, okay, rest isn't going to look the same way for me now as a mom of like three tiny children than it did for me, like when I was 22 and had like zero responsibilities in life. But how can we figure out to still make this like a really life-giving day and a restful day in this intense season? Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:07
  Yeah, I like to compare it to college break. College break, you just arrive back from finals and you just crash for like two weeks over Christmas break. You have requires zero intentionality to get a full and complete recovery, right? You just literally wake up, you call a friend, what are you up to today? And then you kind of go and watch whatever on TV for a couple hours, stay up till three in the morning. It's just easy. Now I know what Jackson's been doing the last week.
• 9:36
  He just got back. Rest comes very naturally when you are focused on your individual experience. Once you start adding children and a spouse into the mix, suddenly rest is not the default state. The default state is chaos. It's like when we stop doing anything, now everything's going to fall apart unless we proactively rest.
• 10:02
  And that was a new category. I'd never heard or thought of proactively resting. And that became the initiative was how do we make this good? Because it's you and me against the kids. Otherwise it's going to be chaos. I, it's such a good, because when it, like you said, like the natural state for when you're like pre marriage, pre kids is just all about you and whatever, like you don't do anything and then maybe nothing gets done, but nothing's falling apart either.
• 10:31
  But the natural case, natural state becoming chaos is totally true. Well, yeah, when you're when you're single in that in a very simple stage of life, you say you're describing basically the lack of initiative is an intentionality is what creates rest. And in this stage of life, the radical intentionality is required to experience rest. And you associate intentionality with work.
• 11:00
  then you're going to be in a death spiral when it comes to trying to rest with little kids. Yes. It's not going to work. And you're going to find yourself super frustrated.
• 11:10
  Man, that's a yeah, that's an interesting association. Okay, so we're gonna go back and forth a little bit, you know, as we kind of dip into the past and the present, but I'd like you guys to now just kind of walk through a day of rest. Like what is a typical day of rest look like? What are some of those intentional rhythms you guys have discovered? Then we can talk about the back story is of some of how some of that developed, but I'd like to get the yeah the framework. Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:37
  Sure, we're just talking about the day, not starting on Friday night, but starting on the actual day. You can mention, yeah, we're going to primarily look at that day, but feel free to like, yeah, start on Friday night and just kind of walk us through, because I'm sure those are, it all kind of flows. Sure, yeah, so generally here coming up in the next hour or so, Chandler are going to take both of our phones and our computers all live in the pantry in our kitchen.
• 12:01
  And we're going to turn them off and say, good night, phones. Good night, computer. We'll see you in 24 hours. And we just put them physically at a charging station away. And then we close the doors. And it's like, that's gone now. We have some friends coming over today. Another family has come over. And so we'll have a big meal. Generally, it's going to be food that we like.
• 12:19
  And we're going to drink more than we typically would. And we're going to not Chandler, obviously. And we just generally kind of let loose and have a great time with our friends. And sometimes it's just our family. We have some ritual stuff that we'll go through around the table. Some kind of like pomp and circumstance of blessing the kids and singing a song. And it's generally the goal is this needs to be everyone in the family, us and the kids' favorite night of the week.
• 12:46
  And if that's not the case, you have to make it cooler. Yeah, crank it up the coolest. Yeah. Awesome. And then after that, after dinner, we'll do like a dance party or play a game. And it's just generally kind of fun stuff together.
• 12:58
  And we try to avoid any sort of even TV or anything on Friday night. I feel like it's just kind of a time of having fun together. I think I heard a talk from you at some point or maybe it was from someone else who talked about the importance of kids seeing their father dance and that there's no better way to communicate safety to your children than for kids to see their father dancing. And so I feel like- It's important that nobody else sees the father dancing.
• 13:20
  Only the kids. Don't expect any videos coming your way. But yes, that's a very important thing. I agree. Yeah. So then we'll go to bed. We go to bed tonight. And then we've discovered in the past year this amazing concept called Saturday morning cartoons. Oh, tell me about this. And I thought we were past that sort of thing. That was such like a worldly thing. It's amazing.
• 13:48
  are allowed to go downstairs by themselves at 7 a.m. It's at seven is when they're allowed and they can go down and watch Disney Plus and watch shows together.
• 13:59
  in the morning. That is a new thing. Also our two year old is the point where our other kids can get her out of the crib. So they all migrate down at precisely 7. Looking forward to this opportunity to watch shows. And they'll they'll watch shows. And so that enables Chandler and I to sleep in. And so this has been just fast couple of months, but we'll sleep until eight or 8 30.
• 14:21
  which is the first time in our marriage, really, I guess since having kids that we've been able to do that. And that's been pretty great. Let's hold on to it as long as we can. Our kids were just talking about how they used to wake up so early on Shabbat. It was like the one day they could sleep in, but they were always up at like six or seven. Cause they're like, there's so much we could do today. Let's get started.
• 14:44
  I know. Yeah, there's definitely and this is this is we're going to you're going to get you're going to see a contrast, I think, in some of these some of these interviews. We're very much like you guys in that, like, we're more permissive on the Sabbath. And I think some of this is a reaction to all of our backgrounds and the desire to like, let's just start with what's awesome and then like back away. Yeah.
• 15:06
  if we see problems or issues, but like it needs to be good. It needs to be restful. And the rules are there to serve. It's like, I I'm obsessed with that phrase that Jesus, you know, constantly said that, you know, the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath. And so every time I look at a rule, I'm like, does this rule, is this, is this blessing us? Is this causing us to feel more restful or less restful? And that we have the freedom in Christ to pursue what,
• 15:34
  the things that we think are more restful. And so, yeah, I love this. Tell me more about this Saturday morning cartoon. Then what happens? Dirty. Generally, the kids are allowed to have sugar cereal afterwards or we'll do pancakes, but it's generally a sweet breakfast, which is not the everyday breakfast for us. And so we'll turn on, we'll do like reggae and pancakes or something like that.
• 16:01
  Yeah, we found, we found like, I don't know if it's a carryover thing for lots of families, but like something about reggae music, like just makes everyone in our family. You can't help them move to that stuff. Yeah, it's a lot of fun early. And I don't know, it's just a very, like, it matches the vibe for Sabbath in our house well. That's the other thing for me.
• 16:23
  Somebody needs to buy Blake a nice big, like some dreads. Yeah, I want to see like just a Shabbat with Blake cruising to the raggae music.
• 16:34
  That's awesome. There's a great SNL skit called Roz Trent, which is a white guy who gets really deep into reggae culture. And that is me. It's not a great one. Another thing that belongs in the house. Yes. Yes. After that, typically we'll both exercise. We both kind of need to exercise every day just to feel like good, productive humans. Like just we need it to for like mental state.
• 16:59
  So we'll do typically yoga or I might go for a run and the kids are generally playing independently at that point. And then we try to get outside. Sometimes we'll leave our property and go for a hike. There's some hiking trails near us or we also have a trail adjacent to our property. And so we'll walk on the woods and go for a hike as a whole family together. But we try to get outside by around 1030 or so.
• 17:20
  And just generally, we find that we connect with each other better. It's more fun that way. So we'll do that even in the winter if it's snowing. Typically not if it's raining, but if it's snowing or, you know, still cold, we'll still get outside for a little bit. And then we come back. We do lunch with paper plates so we don't have to do any dishes. And then it's nap time. And so the two-year-old, four-year-old and Chandler and I all will nap.
• 17:44
  And then the younger, the older kids will do some art, like use art for kids hub and like do a little video where the tracing art or listen to an audio book or just kind of relax for a little bit. And then we're back outside. We tend to try to do a bonfire
• 18:00
  around three or four o'clock on Shabbat, we live on the Ohio River. And so the Ohio River is constantly dropping off driftwood that we kind of need to do something with. And so we kind of just burn that on a weekly basis and hang out, play music, read, or just poke at the fire or whatever, and just kind of hang out. I do feel like practicing Shabbat had kind of shaped what we wanted in like a home too.
• 18:25
  like we found like we would always want to be like outside with our kids or like that's where we felt most restful like everyone could kind of be together and I remember when we were like looking for a house to like like actually do the majority of the raising of our kids and it was like what if we could what if we didn't have to like drive 20 minutes to a hike like what if we could be in nature just going outside so I feel like our property kind of
• 18:51
  was shaped by Sabbath in a weird way. I don't know. I never thought that before, but that makes it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then at five o'clock, it's time for me to go pick up the pizza. We order LaRosa's on my phone and then Truman and I, this is Truman, our four year old boy. It's his and my one on one time. So we get to drive and pick up the pizza. And while they're doing that, the kids will do a pickup around the house with Chandler at the helm. And then we come back, bring the pizza. We eat it upstairs.
• 19:19
  The kids and I go downstairs and we have kids movie night while Chandler takes a bath during the kids movie night. And then the movie ends. I put the kids to bed and then Chandler comes downstairs. And then we have the grownups movie night and we watch a second movie on Saturday night. Double movies. Double movies. Well, I get the double movie. Chandler gives a single feature. And don't judge me. I like movies.
• 19:48
  freedom that Christ has set us free. That's right. Preach it. So, uh, and that's pretty, and then we go to bed, hopefully around 10 or 11, something like that. That's generally it, uh, trying to think if there's anything we're missing. Yeah, that's generally it. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing.
• 20:05
  I love that. I'm excited to talk through kind of how that came about. That didn't sound like something you probably wrote out, you know, in five minutes and then, you know, the first time. But Chandler, one of the things that so many moms say about this rhythm is that it just feels like every other day to me. And I don't know how. So you just just we just heard what your that day was like. How is it different for you? Or how would you talk to someone who says, isn't that just I'm at home? I'm with the kids. Things are, you know, is this how is it different for you?
• 20:36
  Yeah, I mean, I feel like the, just the pace of it is so much slower. We're not like, I'm not trying to be productive with my kids. I'm not, there's not even like, okay, let's like get these books out or let's, I don't know, we homeschool our kids. So there's a lot, even when we're home every day, there's just a lot that we're doing. But I think just like the fact that like we're all together all day, yeah.
• 21:05
  Yeah, all together. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, I don't know. I guess on the surface, it's like, well, I guess we're always home. But now it feels so different than every other day.
• 21:16
  Yeah. You know, it's funny because it's the word holy, you know, obviously has, we have the connotation of purity, but it also means set apart. And it's really easy to make something feel really different. You just make that thing. Holy, you set it apart for that day. So we only, you know, we only light this kind of candle on the Sabbath. We only listen to this kind of music.
• 21:42
  you know, on Saturday morning, we only, you know, we only do Saturday morning cartoons, you know, on Saturday morning and don't let our kids watch that other days, you know, whatever that is, we only put our, you know, phones away. Like, these are all little tiny rituals that add up to a completely different experience.
• 22:02
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• 22:17
  Now, a lot of people are going to hear that and think you guys are the most schedule obsessed people they've ever heard, you know, that you're incredibly disciplined and that this is just the way that you, you just have this natural gift that nobody else can relate to. And I know the difference, you know, I know who you guys are, but these people listening to this, they may not know. So talk, talk to us a little bit about how this evolved. How did you guys start to do, do these and create all these traditions?
• 22:47
  I mean, we are not, I would say on the bell curve, we are not even average in terms of discipline or scheduling, I would say. And so anything that seems scheduled or structured has come purely out of the desire to survive. I would say it was a necessity that kind of arose. So I would say that definitely, I think people are often surprised at how structured our Sabbath is, but it's not...
• 23:16
  There's no timer going off. There's no bell going off. It's more of just a order of operations of like, we kind of do this, then we kind of do that. And kind of, we can let feel kind of drive it. But there is kind of what, it's more based on what's historically worked. I think a lot of people when, even for us, when we first heard about the concept of rhythms, we sat down with a blank sheet of paper and mapped out in our imagination what we thought would result in thriving.
• 23:43
  And we were completely and totally more productivity. Yeah. And we were completely wrong on both fronts. It was neither productive nor thriving. And I think a big jump for us was when we stopped trying to pre guess what was going to work and instead think of the rhythm, whether it's the Sabbath rhythm or the weekly rhythm as a ledger looking backwards of what works well.
• 24:09
  And so we can try new things all the time. And every time you try something, they're like, Ooh, let's do that again. That's when it ends up on the rhythm. And once I, for me making that switch made it way less, I don't know, constraining and more of almost like a reminder system. Like, remember this last week, that was awesome. We should do that again. Yes. Or like, I feel like a practical example of like, we figured out if we
• 24:35
  we're like leaving the house twice on a Sabbath, like with kids, just the amount of time. That's, I mean, I budget like 30 minutes for getting everyone's shoes on right now, you know? It was like a totally exhausting day. Even if we were like, we're gonna go to the park and then we're gonna go to the pool. Like two outings was just too much. So just like learning from like past mistakes, we're like, okay, we're exhausted at the end of our day of breath.
• 25:01
  That's because we went to three parks today and that's not fun. Yes. Just relearning from our mistakes. Yeah. And I think it's important that we give ourselves permission to a try new things and be try new things that don't work. Yes. Yeah. That's how you get to know yourself to know what's restful and what's
• 25:23
  you try something cause it sounds amazing. And you're like, actually that wasn't so great. That's right. And there's something that worked for us in the past that we've killed now because it doesn't work anymore. Mm-hmm.
• 25:35
  So like seasonal things sometimes. Family or actually even weather seasons. They're just, there are certain things that work at different times. Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, one of the things that this I think says to families that are maybe thinking about trying this is that you probably won't be able to create an ideal Shabbat right away. Like your goal should be to have an amazing day of rest maybe in a year or two from now.
• 26:03
  And you'll move closer and closer. It's not like you'll have a terrible day. But I like the idea of like, give yourself a lot of permission to be creative to try things. And then but I think you guys have a rhythm of you, if you're going to do that, if you're going to use the trial and error method of evolving your way to an amazing Shabbat, you need to have something someplace where you can
• 26:22
  kind of meet and talk about like, did we like that? Did that work? Do we want to repeat that? So, I mean, so did you guys have a rhythm where you kind of like, like kind of faced what happened and then decided what to pour cement around and what to toss? Yeah. Yeah. I'd say in our weekly meeting, we would, you know, look backwards on the calendar and just say, Hey, are there any rhythms that aren't working anymore? And I think we've actually, we had some conclusions. We're like, Oh, this isn't working on Sabbath anymore. I'd say with the most broken day for us has always been Sundays actually.
• 26:52
  of how to navigate Sunday and how to make that better. And so I feel like that has often come up, the rhythm of Sunday and some of that's just coming off of Saturday. So I'd say, yes, definitely. You have to have some scheduled time to say, how's the rhythm overall working? Yeah, for the whole week, but then also specifically. Yeah. On Sabbath. Yeah.
• 27:12
  a question that we get a lot is, but, but then if we did something on Saturday, we would miss all the sports games are on Saturday and all of the birthday parties we get invited to are on Saturdays. How have you guys navigated those, those types of possible invites or things like that? Like, I know you probably wouldn't.
• 27:33
  like plan something yourself for your own kids or own family on Saturday, but what if other people and your family, your friends are doing that? Yeah. What do you do with the Gentiles that keep planning stuff on Saturday? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do great at this every time.
• 27:54
  Yeah, this is I think this is it's this is where I firmly stand on the we are wild olive branches. We're not Jewish people and we are all you know, Paul says wild olive branches in the tree of Israel. And so because of that, we we sometimes just do the things based on someone would be really disappointed if we didn't go right. So there's a wedding or a birthday party for a family member.
• 28:23
  even if we don't want to go, we go because we have to go. And of course you want to go. Yes, of course. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we don't. Just us guys. And so we just go and say, and that's where I fall back on what's the definition of rest, which is did I do any revenue generating activity? And then also I'll also say, did I look at any screens? And if I didn't do either of those two things. Minus two movies. Yes, besides. Yeah, those are clear exceptions.
• 28:56
  Yeah. And it's like, if I didn't do those two things, it's fine. Yeah. It's right. And so there are some, and so I'd say there, and there are some instances where it's on the edge, which is like, do we have, like, is this, is this so important that we have to go to it? I think that's where we will have more difficulties. Like maybe this feels more important. We originally had somewhere like felt more important to you. I felt less important to me and I pouted about it. That was my solution was I just kind of pouty the whole time as we went to it.
• 29:26
  That works great for me. Yeah. But generally I do think it's the idea of, as much as possible, we try to have nothing on the calendar for Shabbat. And so if we're invited to a birthday party,
• 29:40
  that isn't mandatory, we would say, oh, that sounds super fun. We may be there. We'll see. It will be there. Unfortunately, we don't schedule things on Shabbat. And so we may come by and then we can ask 30 minutes before, do we want to do this? And if the answer is no, then we just don't go. We kind of give ourselves permission. So it's more the framework is, do we want to on the day? I don't know. You talk about it some, because I feel like we're still working through that some. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think
• 30:09
  I think that does it. Well, I think too, like you said, it bleeds into the rest of the weekly rhythm. And I think for a lot of people, we don't obviously have time to kind of dive all the way into the complexity of sports and how to do that. But both of our families have made strategic decisions to get involved in sports during the week that involve the entire family, at all the age groups or as many age groups as possible. And you start making these decisions
• 30:38
  Over time, your kids might be involved in, you know, lots of activities on Saturday that are pre-scheduled, but give yourself time to migrate towards this. And I think that you might find solutions to some of those things that you didn't expect. And you might find yourself just valuing the, because these are trade-offs. Like a lot of times when people are like.
• 31:00
  You know, I need to make sure that we protect my six year old soccer career because we all know that that's that, you know, when that starts to really come up against an epic day of rest that is creating unity and love and cohesion in your family and causing siblings to bond and you start to really think about the trade off between.
• 31:16
  those things, you start to make new decisions, but you have to give yourself permission to like, yeah, to, to, for that to sort of evolve, you know, for this value to go from maybe when you first start doing it, it might be like a five or six in, in, on your, on a scale of one to 10. And you you'll watch if it's bearing fruit and you're stewarding this day really well, that could creep up. And as it does, new decisions will be made. And if you are faithful to meet, you know, you can, you know,
• 31:42
  and talk about, okay, what do we want to carve out? What do we want to repeat? So this is just a process. I think people need to get really comfortable with that process. You know, one of the things about like people scheduling things on Shabbat, have you guys noticed, I don't know if this, over time, there's a sociological experiment, which is that if something like 10% of the people in the community say no to something,
• 32:06
  That's enough to shift the entire community. It's just not 50%. So like if like 10% of your friends are vegan, then the amount of vegan food that'll happen in potlucks or restaurants that you'll go to as a friend group will become really common. And so we didn't try to do this, but we've discovered, and I don't know if you guys have noticed, the trend of like more things being planned on other days of the week and more people protecting Shabbat
• 32:36
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel like a lot of a lot of our friends practice a Saturday Shabbat and I think it really I'm thinking like birthday parties, I guess we don't get invited to a lot of Saturday birthday parties anymore, because a lot it's really like those events happen those like fun community events in the community that we're in right now happens mostly on a Sunday afternoon or another night of the week.
• 33:06
  which is a cool, I mean, I know that that for most people, that's not a normal thing. Yeah, and I feel like with the sports stuff, we knew we wanted to have a larger family from when we started having kids. And so just the,
• 33:24
  like I'm one of 10 and all of my brothers played baseball. And I just saw like on a Saturday, there were like eight baseball games that everyone was just going all over to. And that was fun for them. But I think we just like, oh, that doesn't feel like rest to us or not something that we wanted. So I think what that's looked like for us, like we still have a pretty active family,
• 33:51
  Blake and all our kids do jujitsu together. I haven't started yet. Come on Chandler. And then like a lot of board sports. So like snowboarding and wakeboarding and skateboarding, all the boards. But those are all things that you can like do together and we'll do them on Sabbath, but it's not like Penny's going this way, Everett's going this way. And we're all like feeling crazy and frazzled and driving your life away, you know? Yeah.
• 34:20
  Yeah, that feeling, we declared at one point when our kids wanted to do some individual activities that none of the other ones want to do. We declared one day a week scatter day, like you just described. For us, it was Tuesday. So it was like, you can find an event that, you know, and we did a lot of research and found things.
• 34:39
  things that our kids, you know, the things that they really wanted to do, we were able to find ways for them to experience that on a Tuesday night. And we just said, it's scatter night, you know, we'll find ways to get you to whatever those activities are and get you, let you have that experience. But, but we're going to really double down on the kind of activities that we can all do as a family. And because man, yeah, if you start to have a larger family, like this, this gets out of control really fast and your kids are experiencing and getting a blessing from being a part of a,
• 35:07
  a larger family team. But it does come with some trade-offs. And I think that they're great trade-offs, but I think that it is hard to try to figure out how do you accommodate everybody and all those individual activities. And I feel like our scatter night was when our kids were older. I think we even had a driver by then. So it was easier for them to. Yeah. But I would say our kids have never known anything else than what,
• 35:34
  We do, they've never been in the practice of going to games and stuff on the weekends. And when they hear about that now they're like, oh, why would you, why would you want to do that? Like there's, there's no part of them that like feels like they're missing out or, um, like they just think that that is like a crazy thing that you like wouldn't do with your family all day on Shabbat doing things together.
• 36:00
  And you guys have done a little bit of experimenting at different seasons, like during the winter, like because you are a little more extroverted than we are. And I think there are some that are like, hey, we want to hang out with some friends. How do we make that happen? You know, talk a little bit about what are some of those things that you've tried and what worked? If there's things that didn't work, you know, point that out as well.
• 36:20
  Yeah, for a while, Rheingeist Brewery in Cincinnati was a lifesaver for us. We would go to Rheingeist in the afternoon, maybe like four o'clock with the barbers. And we had some other folks that we would go there, drink beer, play ping pong. And the kids could all, they were small and could all run around. And that was super fun in the wintertime, especially just to be able to get out of the house and do something. And that was when we had maybe three years old and one year old.
• 36:47
  So that was great. And then it got super popular and fraternity started showing up at around four o'clock on Saturdays and it got way less restful. And I mean, it was actually pretty entertaining for our kids to have like some drunk college students like wanting to play cornhole with them, but it was a good part of the environment. And then...
• 37:06
  We, even last winter, we went to the office that I work out of. Jeremy, you've been there in the warehouse. We've, there's a half pipe there and like a lot of space to run around. So we would go right before lunch with some friends a couple of times, hang out around there, go to a little deli down the street, pick up sandwiches and just all hang out and eat there. And that was fun to be able to interact with people. I think it was really helpful to not have people at our house on Sabbath. It was better to be outside the house. Yeah, you don't feel like you're like,
• 37:36
  I don't know, even the subconscious feelings of like hosting or like, you know, pick up before people come or something like that. Yeah. And then now we're also doing every other week, we're doing this men's Bible study with you, Jeremy, where we meet at a trampoline park, take all the kids, the wives can go and get coffee or whatever.
• 37:53
  whatever they want to do. And then we let the kids jump on the trampoline and then we talk through the Bible and that's been super fun. I love that. Yeah. That was something I've been trying to figure out for a long time is that is, you know, in the Sabbath, you know, the one requirement was that the men would get together and have like a midrash, like a Bible study thing. And it's one of the, for me, at least, I don't know how everyone else feels, but it's like one of my, one of the most enjoyable, um,
• 38:18
  conversations, even though I'm introverted, if we can sit down and talk about, you know, really intense topics, I don't know that that is restful to me. And I'm like, is there a handful of guys? And then basically the guys I was asking, they said, yeah, well, it can't be that I leave my wife with all the kids and then drive to a Bible study. I'm like, yeah, that's like the worst Sabbath ever.
• 38:38
  So, so we, so yeah, I kept on thinking, okay, well, what would they be able to bring their kids to? And so, yeah, it's crazy. Like these are all over the place. There's a franchise called Urban Air that started, I think in Texas, and now it's in Cincinnati. There's a bunch of them here and they're building more.
• 38:54
  And so, yeah, we just come here before it opens that I made a deal with the owner and, you know, the guy manages it and they have six different, you know, party rooms. And so we just meet in one or two of the party rooms and the kids can play. And then, you know, eventually the park opens up and yeah, it's a really cool rhythm. And I think that especially if you live in a climate.
• 39:16
  that is, you know, has a pretty rough six months of the year, but you can't get out and you've got little kids that have lots of energy. You might need to be really creative about how to do that. And so all of these guys now have, you know, passes to this park. And after, you know, an hour or two there, your kids are really have done a lot of fun exercising. They love being there. And so, yeah, I would, if you can find kind of creative outlets like that during, especially the cold months of the year, I think that's really important.
• 39:46
  I was really impressed by your creativity and proactivity on that. I think that you kind of, you really want to do this on Saturdays. Yes. And you heard a resounding, like, I don't think this is going to work. Instead of just being shut down, you said, but why? They're like, well, we can't leave our wives with all the kids. You're like, okay, what if I brought the, what if you brought the kids with you? And they're like, well, what would we do? We can't have the kids just sit in the basement. Like, well, what if it was at a trampoline park? I didn't know.
• 40:16
  You kept on going until you found something that worked and that required you negotiating with the owner of the thing, then delegating out who has to find the babysitter for Saturday. Like there's a lot of moving pieces to it to achieve what you wanted. And I think it's kind of demonstrative of what's necessary across the board for Sabbath is like just because it took a lot of intentionality, negotiation,
• 40:40
  financial dealing just to pull off the rest you want. I think that's, it's awesome though. Yeah. Yeah. It takes work to rest. It does. Amen. And I'm that annoying, like four-year-old who can't stop asking, but why? I noticed there's gotta be a way. I do not like to, yeah. You don't like to answer cuz. Yes. Yeah. That doesn't sound like that.
• 41:06
  Cool. Well, guys, yeah, as we kind of button up here. So you guys have I know fielded lots and lots of people asking you questions as we have. And so as we sort of transition is any any last words of advice that you give to particularly families of young kids who are thinking about, you know, crafting a day of rest and are a little intimidated by this.
• 41:28
  um you know what by what it would mean to to try to do this with young kids in particular to get started like any any like uh encouragement for them why they should why they should try um why they should maybe persist if they've tried and are kind of feeling a little stuck um i i i feel like sabbath has taught us like a lot so much outside of just resting um
• 41:59
  this is like a heavy note, but, but we, um, like three years ago, we had, um, a couple of miscarriages back to back. And, um, when, after, I think after our second one, um, our kind of, when we realized what was happening, we kind of just like stopped the day and like, we all just really hanging out, um, and kind of just grieving together and our, um,
• 42:28
  oldest at the end of the day, he's probably eight years old. He said, um, he's like, you know, today was a really sad day, but it also felt like a Shabbat too. And I had this like, wow, this is like the practice of resting that God gave us is also like a practice of like learning how to like, how to stop and like how to grieve and like how to not like constantly be like productive. Um,
• 42:57
  And I feel like our family, like, grew really well as, like, together. And it was something that, like, brought us a lot closer together. And our kids talk about it all the time. Like, it's just, like, it's, it's, it was, like, a really hard, but a really beautiful time. But I think when we had been practicing Shabbat for, like, 10 years, I didn't know that that was, like, also what we were practicing for, like, how to just, like, be together. Um.
• 43:24
  I don't know. That's one thing. That's really good. Very good. My only advice that I would give to anybody is just probably lower the bar of expectation in terms of how rested you're going to feel at the end of the day. And also lower maybe the expectation of how intentional it should feel or how holy it should feel. And generally, it's okay to just
• 43:55
  begin experimenting and if you, you can know whether you did revenue generating activity and if you even just stopped that for 24 hours, that's a big step. And that's actually a big step that most people haven't been able to take at all. And if you introduce one rhythm that gives you life and then the rest of the day is still feeling like chaos, like that's, it's positive. And we can kind of do 1% a week.
• 44:19
  for multiple weeks compounding, it can get really, really cool. Just generally to cut yourself some slack. This is actually a very difficult time in raising children. The more children you have five and under and with the oldest, not being yet five or being only five, that is the eye of the storm. And it does get way easier as that oldest one kind of pops over five. And actually some of these things start to kind of just happen naturally after that, but.
• 44:46
  it's an intense period but really worth I mean there's a there's a reason why God tells us to rest because because like we'll actually kill ourselves if we don't and I think society is like burnout or moms are stressed and like everything it we're all just like overworked overstimulated over we're just feeling crazy and um
• 45:11
  turns out god like thought about that and and created a weekly rhythm to help you not be like
• 45:19
  Awesome. That's so helpful, you guys. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and the story. And we're excited to hear from all the families that get to listen to this. You guys, you know, jump into this and we're with you and wish you the best. And we're excited to see you get the fruit that we're describing as you slowly, carefully with those low expectations and those baby steps get into practicing the Sabbath. So thank you guys so much for doing this with us. Thank you guys.
• 45:48
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at FamilyTeams.