In today's episode of Homeschool Money, we are going to give you an inside look at our celebration of our 300th Sabbath occasion. So that means for 300 weeks in a row, we have taken 24 hours at the end of our work week and celebrated. A Sabbath, what does that even mean? Right? We're gonna answer that in today's episode and show you what it looks like for us to take 24 hours out to seize from our work to celebrate the goodness of what we've been given. And to just rest and not do work intentionally so that when we do work, we can actually be more productive and more successful at everything that we do.

A fast growing number of parents are starting their homeschooling journey while others have been homeschooling for years. All of these parents are asking one big question, how can I afford to homeschool? We are here to answer that important question once and for all. Hi, I'm Crystal Obby. And I'm Anthony Obby. We've been homeschooling our five kids for 13 years and we funded it. Through our online consulting business that we've been running for over 17 years now, we're combining Crystal's financial coaching expertise with my digital marketing background where I help entrepreneurs launch and sell online. We're here to help fellow homeschooling parents self-fund their homeschool journey and create lifestyle businesses. For financial freedom without a nine to five job, are you ready to start living life on your own terms and make your homeschooling experience a lot more fun? Well then sit back, crank up the volume, and enjoy this episode of Homeschool Money.

Hey there, homeschoolers. We wanna welcome you to the show. My name is Anthony Obby. I'm Crystal Obby, and we have a very interesting episode to share and some great content to share with you. Today we want to talk about what it is for us as a family to celebrate a Sabbath. That is an end of the week. Time where we just cease from our work. Stop working for 24 hours. Honor God during that time and intentionally dismiss work and celebrate being and creating a space in our family and in our schedules, as busy as we are as a family with five children as homeschooling parents. On top of that. Taking that full burden and responsibility of parenting our children and also operating our own business. And how in the world do you find 24 hours to rest from your work. Not even doing housework. That's almost impossible. It's almost unheard of. And I'm gonna get into how crazy I thought the idea was whenever Crystal first brought it to us and suggested that we should do it. Okay? So a little bit of backstory. We always. Had heard about taking a Sabbath because we talk about the 10 Commandments, and so we are just, you know, regular Christians. We don't have any rules that we need to follow or anything as far as doing a Sabbath, but it just seemed like some wisdom to be able to have a day rest. And one time I was talking to my grandmother. And remember we were talking about how did y'all always get everything done and just get your school, your schoolwork done, your housework done, just everything that you need to do, and just make sure that life keeps going and still have a sense of ease. Even when we didn't, they didn't have all this technology and all this extra help. And my grandmommy said, what? Do you remember what she said? She said, take a day off. And we were like. Huh, that makes zero sense. Right. And so she was like one of the most godliest people that I've ever known, and she just was so simple. She was like, take a day off. And, and with all this technology and all this, everything we have, it seems like it's harder to take a day off. And so that happened. And then we were, we do the 10 Commandments every night as a family. And we got to, how we say the 10, the commandment rep work. Six, rest one. And one of our kids said, well, why don't we work six and rest one? And I was like, well, I guess we're just disobeying this commandment, right? And, and it was like, I didn't have. Any explanation other than that, because it really does kind of seem like a good idea and we're encouraging them to follow the other commandments. That's right. So also at that time, we had been talking about resting and Sabbath, and for years before we even had kids, we had already had that on a list of something that we wanted to do, and we just, like I said, didn't know anybody that did it. There was no rules about it. And so it always was in the back of our minds to do it. And so all these things kept happening to just kind of bring it up as a topic. And we had just had our fourth child and I ended up in the hospital with postpartum preeclampsia and resting was a big deal for me at that time as well as. Just being, trying to understand how to manage having four kids instead of three kids at that point. Now, most people, I mean probably in particularly this audience, you know, moms who have kids in homeschooling, they would likely know what postpartum preeclampsia is, but that's a long, crazy big word. Can you describe what that means? Basically, it just ended up. Meaning that my blood pressure was super high and it was a problem, but after delivery instead of pre-eclampsia, right? Which was before delivery, which is something that you talk about when you go to your, your doctor visits, but you don't talk about what can happen in postpartum. Right? So we just had this whole year of dealing with all of that, and so we were just primed and ready for. Needing some extra support on us, being able to rest us, being able to manage our life. And so just the idea of taking a Sabbath was just interesting. So I was reading about it. That happened with the 10 Commandments. I talked to my grandmother, all these things. So then, but also what was our, our, our schedule looking like at that time? Well, we were getting into the end of year time where it's very reflective and we're thinking about the goals that we wanna have for the next year. And so we also at that time also liked to have Christmas parties. Mm-hmm. So we hosted multiple Christmas parties. Now, this is also with me going to the cardiologist with the postpartum preeclampsia, which looking back, it just, it kind of lets you see. Right. We were also super involved at our church. We were super involved in just our community. Yeah. I think you had calculated how many hours we were spending volunteering at our church that time with four kids, and having, trying to recover from postpartum preeclampsia which meant for, for me it, it ended up being one of the scariest times. Of my life. One of the top two, top two scariest times of my life was related to postpartum situations, having, with having our last two children. And so in that particular time a, a probably three months into the baby, like around month three or so. We rushed you to the hospital because your blood pressure and everything was off the charts. And that week we had to rush you back three different times because the medications that they gave you were not, were not working. So that was like a big ordeal for me. Then you look at just our work schedule of volunteering at the church, that was like 20 some odd hours a week. You had calculated between all the things we and all of our involvement. Yeah, we calculated our involvement was a 25 hour commitment with everything included on top of having four kids on top of everything we were doing to make a living. Right. And so on top of the fact that we liked hosting Christmas parties and. Also having other people over just, you know, just hospitality. Yeah. And so it was just, life was just typical full American, Christian life, right? And so it was like, Hey, we need some rest. What are we gonna do? And so that's why the topic came up and it was super interesting and all these things kept happening. And so when we got to the end of the year and we were like, we had not made the decision for that to be a goal yet. I came to you at around the second day, after the first of the year and was like, Hey, I think we should do this. But we had already missed the first day. You know, we always have a meeting at the end of the year and it hadn't been on our list. 'cause we do always do our annual review and it didn't make it to the list, but I was like, Hey, I think we need to go ahead and take this 24 hours off every week. And. Be able to have this Sabbath and we need to try to do it. And you were like, how in the world, oh, is it gonna happen? No. No. Don't you? How in the world are we planning on taking a Sabbath? And that means that also includes I can't do housework.

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You can't do housework, you can't do any work and you, we can't make any commitments outside of resting and family time for 24 hours. You'd have lost your last good brain cell a a. There is no possible way that can happen with four kids, no family in town. It is on us, so, yeah. Right. We don't have mother-in-law who comes over and cleans for us and watches the dishes and watches the kids and all that. No, we're volunteering heavy. At our, at our church we're, we're having people over trying to have this, you know, social life and everything. We have four children. We try to keep a h you know, a house halfway decent with dishes washed with crumbs that are constantly being drug on the floor, floor diapers thrown in the corner. You know, we're trying to keep a clean house, so trying to take care of just the house cleaning in its. Self with four kids. And at that time it was Christmas, so oh my gosh, on the day, stop it. The day that I got, I told you that we should probably do this. Literally the, remember the upstairs in the movie room was full of all the Christmas stuff that we had brought upstairs to try to make the downstairs look decent, right? We brought every, all, 'cause we have two Christmas trees, right? All of our decorations. And so the upstairs is like. Like that on movies where they're like, eh, eh, wrapping paper and boxes, tons of gifts everywhere. And posting two Christmas parties and having mm-hmm. Family in town for like a week, like every possible thing you could do. And then I'm like, well, we should take time off and not to clean every day. Your timing is impeccable, crystal. And so at that time. Our oldest son was like eight, and then our youngest was four months, so we had, our team here is like 8, 6, 4. Like six months old, so we don't have all that extra kid support because they're all like so little babies. And then we had like all these diapers and then the laundry, I remember, so hold on. Do we have two or three in diapers? At that time? There was at least two. Just two. I remember. Yeah. 'cause I remember taking a picture because I had to buy so many diapers and wipes and I have a picture. I was just like, we're buying a lot of diapers and wipes. Right. So whatever the ages got, I know the youngest was six months when we started. Yes. And so they. Also just threw off a lot of laundry. And I remember just looking at the mound, it was literally a mound of laundry. I would be doing just loads of laundry and I'm doing all my stuff. And the dishes. And the dishes and bottles because I would nurse, oh my goodness. And pump so that I have to, you're like, remember you would always do the you know, wash the bottles for me, right. So like, I'm nursing and then I'm pumping so we can actually leave more. Mm-hmm. And then, so. Just every, just every, the picture was just crazy in the, and in the midst of all of that, crystal decides that it's a good idea to introduce the idea of a weekly 24 hour. Sabbath. So you like so many other ideas we've had, you said, okay. 'cause I said let's just give it a try for a hundred weeks. We don't have to do it forever. This doesn't have to be a lifestyle change forever, but if we do it and we give a hundred weeks to it, then we can at least just give ourselves a chance. And then what if. It is better, and if it's not, then you know, we just go back to just 24 7, you know, activity. That's right. But the benefit if it works could be incredible. Yeah. And so what we did was we went on ahead and started it, like I said, the second week was January 10th, 2020. And we said, we're not signing up for any ATH athletics or any activities, or we're not saying yes to any engagements, nothing. Just, we chose Friday night until Saturday to be our Sabbath and we were looking at our calendar and that was just, there was nothing special about that day for us. It was just that's the day that we thought that we could pull it off. And then we made Thursday the day that we just make sure to get the house in order and try to like line up food and everything. And so we started that day and we, for our first Sabbath. We planned to go out to eat 'cause we're like, we can't handle cooking. Right. We, we can't get there and, and have everything cooked by like six or whatever on Friday. So Right. We got all dressed up and we went out to a restaurant and had dinner and then we had family worship time. Mm-hmm. We played all this gospel music and Yeah. Everything. And we, you know, had prayer time and read the bible together and we just started and little did we know, just a couple months later. The whole world shut down. I mean, what, what, what? The timing of all of this was amazing. We had really, what we had ultimately done was cultivated our own home church service, which really brought out the very best, like the music that we played was music that like really, like instantly connected us with. Like our whole upbringing in church and that type of thing. Whereas we hadn't, you know, we'd gotten so far away from that with the music, you know, at the church we were at and everything. And so it was just an incredible relief we had. Since the pandemic did start, that means no more restaurants, so we were now eating at home, which meant that I got more into cooking. And, which I love to do. And we bought that grill. Yeah. We bought one of those electric smokers because of the pandemic and slowing down. Was able to actually get into, get into that. And so that allowed me to do barbecuing and that allowed me to just learn some more recipes and take more time since just had this free, a little bit of freed up time. And you're a amazing chef. You've always been someone who could do a really great job cooking and having that time. Just upleveled all of our eating. Yeah. Around here. Yeah. No, seriously. I mean, it didn't take long with an electric smoker for me to learn how to smoke a brisket with the best of 'em. It didn't take long for me to learn how to make seafood gumbo, which I never knew how to do, but it's my number one favorite food. For my whole lifetime and learn how to do it because of that freed up time and that just time in history where we intentionally decided to slow things down and, and cancel some things. That just had us busy and running all the time. And the crazy thing is, is, is, is for you. Whenever the pandemic happened and we just said we're we we're gonna have to, we're just gonna have to cut some of this volunteering and everything that we're doing right now. What happened with you? The medication that they had me on at the hospital for my blood pressure, I had to cut it in half. Because you were able to cut it in? Yeah, I was able to cut it in half because just by cutting the commitments that we had. It lowered my blood pressure so much that they had to take me off of the majority of the medicine they were giving me. And so just slowing down literally probably saved my life and has changed the quality of my life just by doing that. And we would've never known that had we not made this commitment. Absolutely. Absolutely incredible. That actually happened, guys. It actually happened. It was amazing to see. Yeah. The doctor was like, whatever you did it's working. Yeah. And I was like, I'm just saying no now. Saying no. The power of No. Yes. And so, so we did that and it was working and we were just implementing everything we knew a day at a time, and we were just okay, just doing it messy, you know? Mm-hmm. It wasn't. A perfect execution. We were just committed to showing up, right? And so we just did one week after next week, and we just said every week. We were just gonna get the house in better condition, get the, the schedule in better condition make everything easier to do. And as the year went on, everything got better. But surely that time that we had every week was just magical and it was amazing. And so after a year. We after 52 weeks, I, I'm, I'm doing, I'm just gonna try to describe the feeling of what it was for us. Like describe a typical Sabbath evening for us for when it was a 24 hour period, like you said. So Friday night to Saturday night. So for us. You know, we gotta get work done and everything like that on Friday, and then we gotta, if we, if I'm in a grocery shop for food, gotta get that done, get back to the house. So we may start our Sabbath officially at like 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM Okay. Start it then. And what that looked like for us is we cultivated our, our playlist on Pandora with our favorite songs and you know, bring the the speaker into the, into the kitchen area. And I would start cooking whatever meal I was gonna prepare for us for that night. And there we go. Started a playlist, blasting the music. During that time, we're listening to great music, kind of dancing in the kitchen. It almost feels like. Thanksgiving or Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. I was the holidays. Oh yeah, I was gonna say Thanksgiving time, because that's pretty much all you do on Thanksgiving is make, make a bunch of food. Right. Make really good stuff that you anticipate, you know, it's kind of surrounded around surrounded by a meal, but then the next day of it, Saturday morning feels like the day after Christmas. In that there's nothing to do. You don't do anything on that day, but you plan on just sitting around the tree and letting your kids play and doing something relaxing that's like one day where, you know it is not. You, you know, you're just kind of relaxing and beding out, hanging out. And that's what it felt like. A combination between those cooking on Thanksgiving morning or the Thanksgiving eve whenever you do your cooking. That's what it felt like on Friday night for us playing our favorite music. And then once we get around the table we would get the, the candles with the three wicks and everything from. Bath, the Body Works and and light, light, that candle sit at the dinner table. Having dinner by candlelight with us and the kids, and still playing the music. And you would, do you do a great job at initiating conversation, asking questions like, yeah, we would go around and talk about what we love about each other and then just is, is there anything on anybody's heart? Just give everybody. Time to talk and just share and just be together. Yeah. And just share stories. Mm-hmm. Laugh tell, tell jokes. It's not rushing. Yeah. Just be, just eating dinner as long as it takes. And just by candlelight and just enjoying the meal everybody. Being like, oh, this is amazing food that you made. Mm-hmm. And so enjoying our time together.

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Yeah. And then, oh, we always had a fa a fancy dessert too. Oh yeah. So we'd always make something special. That's right. And then after that, I can't, what, what do we do after that? And, and at tho, whenever we first started, typically at that time we would just hang out and play games or something. Yeah, that's right. And they'd be heading to bed. 'cause the kids were younger. Yeah. And so they would, we would just hang out, play games. Mm-hmm. And just enjoy each other. And then go to bed. Yep. And then, yep. And then the next day we would wake up. When we did, after getting good sleep, you had no alarms. No alarms. Yeah. That, that was a huge thing. Turning off the phone mm-hmm. And letting our bodies rest. And at first we didn't, we never watched movies because we turned, we didn't turn the TV on and we didn't have the phones on. So the phones and TV was off. All we had was music. That is huge. Yeah. Can you imagine doing that for yourself? If you are a person who is kind of struggling with like social media, screen screen addiction or something like that, can you imagine what that would do for you for your, for your, your mental health? What that could do for your, your ability to sleep if you just turned the phone off and the television, and the TV off and let yourself actually rest that it, it would be life changing. It could actually transform your health. By doing it. It could give you more of your ability to concentrate and focus back for you and or your children. It could do so much for you to create a space that's not occupied by the infinite distractions that there are with with screens. Yeah. And just alone. Yeah. That was like a big deal. 'cause that, that word you used is space. It just really always felt like. It was like the space and time. Mm-hmm. That was really special and that we carved out, like just that the holiday season, it felt like we were just able to create that every week on demand. Yeah. And so then we would get up. When everybody was rested and at that time when we first started, a lot of times you would take the kids and you would take them out to the park or to the rec center or something. You would always take them out. And then I would stay home and get sleep. That's right. 'cause at that time I was still up nursing. Yep. And things and so on Saturday, a lot of it, I would take the baby and all that. They put 'em, take a bottle. Yep. And let you sleep. Let mama get some rest. That right there was life saving right there. Yeah. And so a lot of our first year was me catching up on sleep on Saturday and you taking the kids out. And doing things based on the weather. Yeah. So if it was raining, then you would take 'em to indoors and do activities. And if it was nice outside as much as possible, you would be outside with them. Mm-hmm. And so that was what that looked like. And then we wouldn't have any screens on or anything until at least six o'clock on Saturday. Yeah. And then typically we just, you know, going from there. Yeah. So that was our first year and then we had a meeting. And just to talk to the kids and just talk to each other and say, Hey, how did we like this? 52 weeks? How did this go? We've committed to a hundred weeks. How do we like how it's going? And so the things that everybody said they liked were number one was being together. Hmm. Just having the family time. Yeah. They liked that. And then having our fancy dinner, just whatever. And sometimes it wasn't always a fancy dinner. Sometimes we just ordered pizza. That's right. And we were just like, at first we did a lot of eating out, like just going places just to support ourselves so we didn't have extra dishes and didn't have to worry about cooking. So we would just, the whole family would get dressed up and we would go out. Mm-hmm. And then when the pandemic hit, of course we couldn't go, so we did cooking at home. Mm-hmm. And so we just. It was just about making the dinner special. Yeah. So it wasn't always something fancy. Yeah. But it was just intentional and it was, Hey, what do we need to support ourselves? Yeah. And then they liked how we had the candles. Mm-hmm. The candlelight. And then we also got fresh flowers. Mm-hmm. So we would buy fresh flowers and have those on the table. And our daughter would always dress really fancy 'cause she loves fashion. Mm-hmm. And so she would dress extra fancy. Yeah. And our son loved to read the Bible out loud as a family together. Mm-hmm. And he would like to lead on reading some things out loud. Mm-hmm. And then they really liked how we would go around and talk about what we loved about each other. Everybody's heart just felt really full after. We say five things you love about this person, and they just love that. Mm-hmm. Then they also like the fact that we just had dedicated time to pause. Like it was permission to not do anything. Yeah. Because you just feel like you always have to be active and busy. Mm-hmm. And so just, you're not allowed to be active and busy. It's actually a discipline. Yeah. And so we didn't realize how that would build into even our kids. Yeah. And then they liked the prep, the preparation. 'cause our son said he really liked how we got the house ready on Thursdays. Mm-hmm. So it was like every week we're leading up till Thursday and making sure the house is clean, the laundry's done, the food is organized, and if they need clothes to go out to eat, they had 'em ready. And so the preparation leading up to where, by the time we got our system going. On Friday, the house is already clean. I mean, so it's not stressful. The sink isn't full of dishes, so it's not like we're ignoring it now. The first couple months we were, we had to just stop and just look at, look at the sink full of dishes and look, hey, the house, the, we need to put these, all this stuff away or whatever. 'cause we also go from holiday Christmas holiday to a bunch of birthday seasons in our family. So trying to have celebrate birthdays and do all that. It just that, that chaos there, we had to kind of deal with it for the long-term goal. And so we just did it and every week we just got a little bit more organized and a little bit more consistent, and it just flowed better every week that we kept going. And then they liked how we got a chance to spend extra time in the Bible together as a family. Mm-hmm. So they were rapidly learning so many more things because we were, as a family, able to learn. And then they liked how we would take time and we would bless each kid and just pray over them and just really speak into them and empower them. Mm-hmm. And they all really liked that special attention. And the last thing was they liked how one of our daughters is so funny. She was getting older and they, we just liked see, being able to watch her personality develop. Mm-hmm. And she's just a real, a little comedian. She is. And it was coming out on Sabbath. And so this is the actual list that. We wrote mm-hmm. At week 52. Yeah. So that's what our family felt. Wow. At week 52. That's true. That's incredible. I'm so glad that you found that list. 52 weeks in that is just awesome to be able to look back and see what people, you know, and our, our kids and everything were feeling about it all 52 weeks in real time. Yeah. And so we also wrote down. The activities. So the things that we actually did that they, we did a lot of different things. Yeah. But the top favorite things was they liked playing checkers, they liked playing monopoly. It looks like we made lip gloss, you know? 'cause we always have all, what we do is we take. But we have all these craft things that you get for Christmas or birthdays and things. We have 'em all on the shelf and then I have a bucket of all those things. And so when we have time as a family and it's like, Hey, let's make something or do something, we just go get your a craft thing out of the box or off the shelf. Yeah. So. We, it looks like we made lip gloss. I know we made bath bombs one time too. That was good. And then they also liked the bike ride 'cause you've always taken the bike rides, taken the kids to bike rides and so they really liked that. They liked when we watched movies and when you, when you took them to play billiards and you taught them how to play all the games. Mm-hmm. They loved our family walks. 'cause that's something we used to do a lot was do family walks. And they love dance parties. That's too funny. So that, those are the activities that were reported in, I guess, to 2021? Yeah. That they like to do. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. And so we also kept a prayer list.

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And the prayer list basically included making sure that we all survived the the, the pandemic. Mm-hmm. Protecting us from the, the COVID-19 virus. And our conclusion as a family was that we were just gonna trust God, that we were gonna be okay no matter what. 'cause we could, we had at that time, as a parent, you know, we had no idea what was gonna happen. Yeah. We literally told our kids, Hey. The everything could, this could be nothing. Or it could be like the literal, like, you know, was a zombie apocalyp. Right? We don't, we really don't know. But what we do know is we're gonna do everything to protect you and take care of you, and we're gonna trust God. Mm-hmm. And so we just, we're really strong for them and we sabbath all the way through the pandemic. So, and we. Talked about the future sabbaths that we wanted to do, and we talked about like going to hotels or doing camping things. And so they just kind of dreamed a little bit about that. And those, as you can see on the list, there's a lot of things that we ended up doing. Yeah. And so writing them down and then actually fulfilling them, it just shows how being intentional lets you have a fuller life. And then the last thing we did was we wrote down some of the blessings that we had received from doing Sabbath. 'cause I was like, Hey. After this 52 weeks, what do you feel like was a big blessing that we actually received. And we had gotten a letter from one of our aunts that was really special from in the mail. And that aunt has passed away. And so that was like the number one thing that we had gotten. Wow. And we had thought that it was a special letter and we all agreed that that was. You know, a very impactful thing that we had gotten from doing the Sabbath. Yeah. Because we had taken the time to invest into that relationship. Mm-hmm. And that letter really that she sent that really encouraged us and left that legacy of godliness. Mm-hmm. Has IMP impacted all of our children. Yeah. And they really just loved that, you know, that special letter that we got. Yeah. And then the baby was sleeping longer because. We were able to just make our schedule to where we were able to relax more and let the baby, the baby was able to calm down. Yeah. And was able to sleep longer, which was a blessing. And like we talked about earlier, I was able to reduce my medication. Yeah. And my blood pressure didn't end up being a bad thing for us. Right. Which at that time we were, we didn't know if I was, if I had had a stroke or what was going on. Like it was high intense time and I was going to a cardiologist and everything like that whole postpartum period, like you said, was very stressful. The Sabbath directly impacted my physical health and your mental health for dealing, having a wife who was postpartum. Yeah. And then we were able to have the ability to stop. We never felt like we had that before. Yeah. And we really emphasized to the kids that we're stopping and doing the Sabbath because we are loved and we are, you know, the chil we are children of God. We are not just. You know, machines that have to work all the time. And so it's not that we're stopping because everything's done, we're stopping because we're trusting God and we are going to do our best throughout the week, but we don't have to work constantly. And so just getting that into their heads just made them feel. You know, more valuable as humans and not just based on their performance. Mm-hmm. Because they saw us model, Hey, everything's not done, but we're stopping. We're in here having a dance party. We're eating some amazing food, and we're sleeping, so that's gonna change their adulthood. We also hired a house cleaner because it was like, you know what, just literally, there's only so much you can do in an hour, and there's only so much you can do with young kids. And so as organized as you can be, sometimes you just need some extra hands. And so we invested in a house, a housecleaning cleaning company that came, and that freed up more time for us to be able to rest and just be able to get things done so that at the end of the week we could have the time off while still maintaining a clean living environment. Yeah, and a functional environment. We also. We're able to start getting our laundry done easier. One thing that happened that summer, I remember, is our washing machine, I think broke. Hmm. And I said, you know what? I'm not fixing it. Thank goodness it broke. And I went and took our laundry the whole summer. To the wash and fold. Right. That that's how we did it. That's right. 'cause I was like, you know what, I'm, I don't even care. I don't even want this thing fixed. Yeah. So by, by the, the laundry machine completely not being able to work it, it bumped us over into getting some more help. So we had our housekeeper coming and then we had. The laundry being washed and folded, and they were doing a better job. The clothes even looked brighter. They were like, they smelled better. They smelled better. It was like they do everything better. Yeah. And so we just gathered that support, added that on to our just support team. And so that was helpful. And then also it, we felt like that doing the Sabbath prepared us for the pandemic. Mm-hmm. So after a year, we were like. Since we were already doing a lot of worshiping at home. Mm-hmm. So we would worship at home on Friday and then we would go to church on Sunday and it was like, oh, we already kind of filled up. So whenever church got canceled, it didn't have as big an impact on our kids. That's right. And then also just because of, since we were already in the mindset of slowing down and cutting when everybody's activities got cut. We were not as affected as other people. Right. So the pandemic did not affect us as dramatically as it could have had we not started doing the Sabbath. Yeah. Then we also felt more peace about the future. That's what we wrote down here, because it just. We, I guess we're being more mindful about our time. We were more being more restful and we're just trusting God more. So that, of course, that always lowers anxiety. Yeah. And helps you feel more empowered about where you're going. Mm-hmm. Because we had made this big decision and it prepared us for the future. So decisions that we make prepares us for, you know, our future selves. So that's right. And we made that good decision. So it gave us confidence. And also we felt really good because this, we felt like you were able to lead in the home of doing, you know, the scripture reading and just having that biblical influence by having the time. Mm-hmm. Like it was. Okay. For you to take time and find extra scriptures. Yeah, because it always feels so rushed. It's like, mm-hmm. You wanna do more for your kids, but do you really have time to sit here and read about more Bible stories or memory verses or find gospel songs that you were inspired by as a kid? It really, you wrote down here that you felt better about taking time to do all the things that you wanted to do. Yeah. Just as a father for the kids. Yeah. And so also the kids felt more empowered. To worship. They were, you know, able to sing and learn more songs. They had memorized more scriptures. They encouraged one another. They read their Bibles more. I mean, just, everybody just felt more empowered in that way. Well these are, these were initiatives that we were able to then take the time to do with our own kids that we didn't have before because we was, you know, so, so busy doing it elsewhere. Exactly. Exactly. And then also. Yeah, they liked, we all liked the ability to encourage others because as we were having results in our family, we would talk to other families and we were able to encourage them and tell them how to do their own Sabbath, and that's what we're doing now here on this podcast is, yeah. Now we'll have this podcast to share with people and just put the details all in one place. Mm-hmm. But we were doing that one-on-one with other families. Yeah. And then we also were all excited because it just seems like we have way more time for fun. Yeah. Like there is not a week that goes by that we're not having fun. And so we. You know, playing games, we're going out to parks, we're going to, you know, events. We're just doing things intentionally as a family and having an amazing time. So the kids feel like they've just been having a wonderful childhood, and that's what we wanted to do. And it doesn't always have to be super expensive or anything. We've just playing games that we have. I mean, you play like UNO with the kids and just keeping things simple. Mm-hmm. Yeah, just playing the board games and the card games that we've bought for, you know, for Christmas and for birthdays and that type of thing. Nothing fan. It is not about the fancy. Most of the times, whenever I think about that first year Sabbath, I have the feeling of being at the park. I have the feeling of being at the nature preserve and being really out in nature. While folks were, you know in the house, some sheltered in from, from feeling like that's what they needed to do for the pandemic. We got out in nature a lot. Yeah. We spent a lot of time outside. Mm-hmm. And just being able to. Have the sun on you and the wind on you. And just, just that freedom. It was amazing. It was. And so, and that's, so that really created that value in our family too, of just being able to be outside. And then as things lifted o up, we also ended up taking some really great road trips mm-hmm. Because of that passion. Yeah. And so now that we've had 300 Sabbaths, we. Had you know, looked back at the 52 weeks and then this past weekend we celebrated 300 and that was very special because back when we started, we said, just think after 300 Sabbath, our oldest will be 14th. 'cause it happened, the 300th Sabbath happened to land on the 14th birthday of our oldest child. And so we had envisioned that and said, wonder what it would be like. On that Friday. Yeah. And that Friday came and we were able to have my mom and my aunt in town and all of our family members who have come to town, if they're here on a Friday, they know there's gonna be special dinner. We're gonna be pumping the gospel music and it's gonna be some family fun. That's right. And so we were able to celebrate this Sabbath 300 and have birthday party time as well as. Family time and it was just amazing. It was amazing. And so we want to, be able to celebrate the next 100 Sabbath. And it's so funny because we had this long list from week 52 and at Sabbath 300. Everybody said the number one thing they liked was family time. Yeah. After 300 Sabbaths, the same thing was the number one thing, which was family time. And then the number two thing was they liked that they have the permission to get extra rest, and specifically they liked that they're able to get extra sleep. And it's just, it's okay to sleep. And so I'm so glad that our kids are growing up, understanding that it's okay to get rest, and it's okay to spend time just literally hanging with their family and enjoying one another. Yeah. And so we're looking forward to the next 100 Sabbaths, and if you have any questions or want to start a Sabbath in your own life, we're here for you. And. We're excited to be on this journey with you. That's right. And you may be in a place right now where you think it is just as crazy for you to install a 24 hour period where you do no work. But I'm, I'm telling you, I thought the exact same way. We've tried our best to describe where we were when we when Crystal came and said she would install a, a Sabbath into our life. It was so funny because you would think that you have so many commitments that you wouldn't be able to say no. But we kept track and over this last, what, six years of Sabbath. There's only been 10 times where we've made exceptions to less than 10 times that we've made exceptions to saying no. And that's been for when we had friends that are close to us who have had birthday parties on that Saturday, and we wanted to celebrate with them. And so we're not trying to be all legalistic and stuff, but That's right. We spent that time happily celebrating with our great friends, and it's amazing that if you start saying no. You can rearrange things if you just make that intentional. And so outta six years with a family of seven, we have been able to control that and benefit from it. And we've also in the middle of a mindset series and one of the things that happened when we just decided to do it and install that 24 hour period. It began to change our minds about what was actually important and essential and what was not. And and, and so yeah, it's been a real big influencer that actually opened up more time for us to do the things that were value driven for us. Things that were important to us at a whole nother level. And it allowed us to let go of things that we thought were the, the main things, but were really maybe things that we were growing past. And so we encourage you to take, take the challenge and give yourself. The power of experiencing 24 hours a week where you don't work, where you don't do homework clean the house homeschooling work or, or, or work to make money or anything like that where you just celebrate, cease and rest in what's already. Been provided for you. If you, if you, it'll be life changing for you. If you do make that commitment, then just let us know. Reach out to us and let us know. Absolutely. And we'll be encouraging you. Absolutely. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode and we look forward to seeing you in the next.

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