For those of you who are new, my last post came right before we moved into our new home. I wrote about the whirlwind of life, especially at that time when we were building a house (that was of course over-budget and behind schedule), bouncing between rental homes, and adopting 3 dogs (my fault). We had been waiting in transition to move for 3 years, while homeschooling our 2 boys and managing life from multiple hubs. We were running a growing company, starting a Trail Life troop, and trying to work out the finances for our home build.

Many of you also know that we have been in a long period of waiting on the Lord, petitioning Him to bless our efforts for a 3rd child…over 6 years now. We have made our best effort to address my health concerns along the way and allow the Lord to decide if our best health would lead to another child or not.

My last post was very hopeful for what our next season would bring. As I reread that post for myself, I saw my longing for a new season and the unconscious belief that moving into our house and a new mindset would get us there. I now realize that I also had a quiet hope within me that the baby we had prayed for so long would come, surely not more than a year after being settled. You can read that post here.

Our Winter tradition – Patiently waiting

Two Winters ago, we found the book All Creation Waits. It is a beautifully illustrated book that has a countdown to the birth of our Savior…who makes all things new. Every day you learn about how an animal waits out the Winter in anticipation of Spring. It is a beautiful reminder of the purpose of waiting and slowing down in nature.

We were waiting to move into our home and we were waiting for a 3rd child. The home build had been very stressful in the last stretch, but it was still moving ahead. We saw the end in sight. On the other hand, in our wait for the baby, we were worn down, feeling the difficult building of patience that we would rather have skipped.

In my attempts to take regular time with the Lord, this had been my verse to set my vision…

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. ~Isaiah 30:15

I was really trying to be patient in the waiting, no longer comfortable with the other methods available to produce children (for more on that, check out our blog on IVF and ART here). I wanted to embrace the goodness of waiting. Some days, I felt like I could. In the Winter of 2024, I developed comfort in the waiting, hopeful that we were rounding the corner soon.

Still, in many ways, I have felt frozen in the Winter season…unable to attain the dormant/restful state that is the catalyst to the new life of Spring. I felt like the circumstances were what was holding it back and now everything was going to shift.

We have known infertility from both sides, but the Lord showed us with our 2nd child that we can have a baby naturally.  Plus, I had recently had another surgery to address my endometriosis and I had the confidence of their optimistic predictions on my side too…”surely within 18 months, you’ll be pregnant”

I think I had it in my mind somewhere that if we could settle in to this house and settle down the amount of stress in our lives…that the baby would naturally follow.

Surely our season of waiting was over! All of it was finally going to come!

Then we moved in! And it is lovely and beautifully designed and purposed for our family and those we share it with. God gets the glory for helping us push past the financial obstacles to finish that home and we are so grateful to have built such a special place to raise our family.

But moving in didn’t mean that our problems were solved. We were inundated with a barrage of problems, with every utility having some problem in the first six months! I tried to calmly manage the unexpected chaos, attempting to get our routines up and running, but the whirlwind kept swirling!

If I’m being honest, we had just traded out the old problems for new ones. In fact, settling in to this new home became it’s own stressor for me…a person who often feels like I can’t relax until things are in their proper place.

When we finally settled in a bit, I realized that no matter how much I tried to adjust our routines, they weren’t allowing for the reset I’d hoped for. They were still wearing us all down. I grew increasingly aware that moving and settling in wasn’t going to take me out of the swirl. We didn’t have peace in our new home.

But that wasn’t the most painful part. The baby hadn’t come either. Our 18-month window after my surgery had come and gone. As the next Winter approached, I couldn’t avoid the reality that the house milestone didn’t bring the baby like I had hoped.

There we were, in the month of October. The month we were married! The month we had our miracle natural baby! The month my husband said we could begin to try for a 3rd child…and I found myself saying it was pointless to keep going. 6 years was long enough.

I had come to the end of my rope. I felt like we had an answer from the Lord. 6 years was a long time. I am no longer at an age where I am very comfortable with the idea of pregnancy, though I acknowledge that plenty of women do. My list of reasons why we should throw in the towel were piling up. I felt like we were done, that we had given enough time and room for the outcome we wanted and it wasn’t going to happen.

Nothing was happening the way I wanted…Our routines felt difficult and frustrating despite our defined spaces to accomplish them. We were still swirling in the whirlwind despite my best efforts. Our years of patient waiting hadn’t resulted in a baby despite my best efforts. And I was exhausted and spent on giving my best efforts.

Yet, I was desperately seeking the true rest of Winter…trying to remind myself of the purposefulness of waiting.

I wanted out of the whirlwind, but my way of doing it hadn’t worked. If I wanted to reset the pace of our life, it would take a different approach, with lots of time and intention, not just a change in our environment.

Meanwhile, it seems the Lord was right there, pricking and nudging me to pay attention. As I dug in to the new Bible study for Fall called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS), I began to see that my longing for reset and settling in was actually a deep need for rest that didn’t have the time or place to take root. The themes of a Daily Office (regular time with God) and the countercultural need for slow down and rest were swirling in my mind.

And it got me to thinking about all of our waiting. I had been patient and now I had given up! Yet God’s call toward rest and quiet was slowing becoming more clear to me.

How could rest help me when patiently waiting felt unattainable?

But how?

I decided that for this holiday season (Winter 2025), my mindset would be different; a new kind of reset. One that was pursuing rest right now! Not waiting on anything else to happen first.

And the beautiful thing is, Jesus’s offer of rest doesn’t require us to wait!! He offers it to us freely as soon as we come to him! (Matt 11: 28-30)

In a recent Sermon series we heard, the preacher emphasized the things that are “Vital” for our faith, studying the words of Jesus for those things which He says we “MUST” do. And the first MUST was that we DIE DAILY by taking up our cross. And this death is not just putting things away from our old life, but a complete surrender of our life to Christ.

Yet I still had difficulty with this new goal of rest…maybe I always have had difficulty with it. When I’m honest with myself, I don’t really like the idea of “slowing down”. I would often insist Yoga wasn’t for me because of how long you had to stay still and quiet!

So much of who I am resists rest and taking breaks. I think much of my life is measured by productivity…every spare minute needing to be put to good use. Dr. John Delony (of Ramsey Solutions) has said that “If busy-ness is your drug, then rest will feel like stress”.

And yet, I was seeing more and more how incompatible my mindset was with God’s ways.

You see, as I studied the concept of Sabbath from the EHS study, I realized that I had to stop fighting my need for rest. In fact, the word Sabbath from the Bible literally means TO STOP. The Israelites were to stop all work on the Sabbath.

So for this renewal to happen in my life, I needed to allow death to take place. And isn’t it ironic that death is called “sleep” over and over again in the Scriptures. Just like we need rest and sleep, we need death to our own ways DAILY in order to truly be able to move to the next MUST….which is to be REBORN.

Rebirth is only on the other side of death. The new season that I await only comes after I have truly surrendered my own ways.

But this pursuit of rest stirred the Bible teacher in me too. As I began studying rest in the Bible, I saw the different time periods and seasons of rest in a new (but familiar way). Many of you know that I love teaching the book of Hebrews to all ages, as I consider it the bridge to help us understand the connections between the Old Covenant with the Israelites and the New Covenant for Christians.

“So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God [Christians]”
Hebrews 4:9 (NLT)
…Many translations actually use the word Sabbath here (NIV, NASB, ESV)

As I listened to (great) sermons and studies about Sabbath and beginning a tradition of rest in Christian homes, I began to feel the necessity of clarifying the different forms of rest in the Bible.

If we in the Christian world are going to embrace the need for rest (and it’s a good thing that we do!), then we need to understand how to keep a Sabbath rest that is unique to the New Covenant established with Jesus.

See my next blog post here to dig into this topic more fully!

Chasing Rest!

Image by Jazella from Pixabay

Inspired by all of these pricks to embrace rest, I decided to try to put into practice a weekly rest for our family – a Sabbath of sorts. We decided to attempt this new routine over the Winter break. The slate of activities was naturally clearing away for a time and I wanted to establish a more structured Trellis for our lives that digs in to being with the Lord and relying on Him, no matter what whirlwind we are in.

When? How?

One of the emphasis points from the study was to try to take a full 24-hour period in your week for rest. The Sabbath for the Israelites was from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. There is something beautiful about a weekly rest that begins in the evening. When you have to carry your Sabbath (stop work) mindset into the next morning, it inspires rest rather than anticipates it.

You go to sleep…and then you wake up…still pursuing rest and a pause. You die (remember death is sleep in the Bible)…and then you are reborn…each morning.

I found that seeing the Sunrise and the Sunset are ways that our whole family recognizes the beauty and majesty of God. And we get 2 of those to watch under this new Rule of Life. Many times we sleep in, but one amazing thing about our view in the mountains is that you get a second sunrise, when the sun peaks out above the mountain ridge. It’s a shame that we often get so caught up in work that we don’t even take a moment to look outside!

Photo of the sunrise captured from our deck on Oct 28, 2025.

We are putting down the phones and paying better attention to the beauty of our space. We are taking time to rest and look at the beautiful moments in a home that was created to enjoy the view!

When we were deciding where rest was most needed, I realized that our Sundays were not the place. Although we do always seek to prioritize Worship services on Sunday, the remainder of the day often goes to errands and preparation for the week ahead. We were in need of a reset during the week…so we began a mid-week rest…going from an evening to the next afternoon.

A bumpy start…

As we refined that process, I saw our family responding to the great need for rest.

That doesn’t mean that these attempts have been smooth. In fact, when we began our weekly rest routine, I was quickly discouraged by the feeling that we were failing at it. Most of our first attempts were filled with marriage arguments, kid’s meltdowns, and tasks needing to be squeezed in by necessity.

It was messy. It still is more than I care to admit.

And yet, each time we do it I realize that if we didn’t take the break, those things would still be there. But maybe they wouldn’t get the attention that they need if we just breezed right by them onto the next thing.

So I tried to shift my mindset about these “setbacks”. It was important to hold the process with an open hand, avoiding a mindset of rules and set requirements and instead watching and paying attention for what helped and what didn’t.

If my kids had a tough day, then maybe it was a good thing they had the time to go cool off. And I had the time to go see them later. If they missed the Sabbath worship time one week, maybe they would feel drawn to it the next time.

If my husband and I were fighting, maybe we needed time to work some of these things out. Maybe they were actually building up below the surface and creating resentment. Breaking out of the unresolved tensions and arguments in our marriage takes time. But it doesn’t return void. Slowly, we were more able to have our time together be a delight.

If I was feeling the stress of our circumstances, what could I do on my Sabbath day to bring my burdens to the Lord? What would help me to reset, rather than just press ahead?

Our family rest now looks something like this:

• Early evening on Wednesday:
  • We settle in from jujitsu, class or work. (Stop)
  • Family dinner at home!
    • We light candles and stay at the table. (Rest – Connection)
    • The kids are always hoping for a Sabbath Treat (Delight)
  • Bible reading together, sometimes a hymn too (Worship, Study)
  • Something just for fun – board game or a bonus show (Delight)
  • Go to bed in Sabbath – no phone emails or work (Stop)
• Thursday morning:
  • Wake up in Sabbath – no phones, work or email. (Stop)
  • Enjoy the morning and breakfast (Delight)
  • Break off into separate groups:
    • Cameron – to work – this was part of our agreement since I asked for it mid-week.
    • The boys – off to Grandma’s for a special Bible study time and play. (All!)
    • Tracee – either getting a block of study time at home or attending my ladies Bible class to fellowship with others. (All! This is honestly my favorite time!)
      • I often take it slow, getting a shower before settling into my study or writing. (Rest)
      • I take time to reconnect with friends (Delight)
  • Lunch: Cameron comes home to eat with me for one last break before our normal routine and the boys usually eat with Grandma (Stop)

Having attempted this process most weeks for 3 seasons now, I am seeing the benefits of slowing down in the midst of the whirlwind. Instead of believing I can tame or eliminate the whirlwind, I have had to accept that I need to learn to live restfully in spite of the whirlwind of troubles. They don’t stop. If I’m truly waiting for the storm to calm to allow room for rest, then it will never come.

Beginning to miss Sabbath

We have stayed committed to protecting this time for our family.

Even though the habit was building, I wasn’t sure that it was making a big difference. But then we had about a month when our weekly routine just wasn’t possible. The weeks began to stack up and before I knew it, several weeks had passed. And I realized how much I missed it. I realized how easy it was to start adding things back in.

I saw the importance of this discipline in a new way. We all noticed the gap when it was missing. Our first Sabbath after weeks was mostly rest! Almost none of us wanted to do anything but hang out on the couch. So we watched the movie David. The good thing about putting so much effort into a habit like this is that it comes back fast.

So even though it is still far from perfect, filled with difficulties and reasons why we “can’t”, we can see the good that the Lord intends for us in the Sabbath.

The 7th Year…This Is Us

There is another kind of Sabbath in the Bible.

Just as God created the week with a day for rest, he created the seasons. And when He gave the Israelites their laws, He established a rest for the land.

“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in the field; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow.” Exodus 23:10-11

In the 7th year, they wouldn’t plant anything, relying on the harvest from the previous 6 years to get them through. The whole year the land got to rest and the people fully relied on God for their provision.

God establishes a 7-year rhythm even for the crops, to allow for rest.

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.” Hosea 10:12

As I left off earlier, I thought we were at the end of the road for conceiving naturally. I was ready to let go of our dream.

And then, my husband asked me to give it some more time. Sometimes men have a different lens regarding children older in age. He felt more open to children now than when I had to convince him with a 1&3 year old. He asked for some room to pursue answers about his own infertility and not to close the door just yet.

I considered the one outfit, the rattle and the baby shoes that sit in my closet waiting to be used. I considered the pile of organized baby items that I have kept packed away, not ready to sell because we might still need them. And yet, I wanted to say no.  

I was almost surprised at how much I wanted to give up. I was feeling the exhaustion, the inevitable age gap of our kids, the marriage struggles, and the fear of added complications for a pregnancy at this point.

And yet, as I listened to these lessons on Sabbath and rebirth, I remembered the Sabbath for the land and the 7th year.

We needed a break from the last 6 years. We needed a fallow field. We needed rest!

But we are not done trying. We have committed to a new fertility specialist to help us both to optimize our health. We are attempting to keep trying, to not lose hope that God will still grant us our request, but with a spirit of rest that we will need for the next season.

We are giving this last year to the Lord, dedicating it to Him and pursuing the rest needed to plant a bountiful harvest in the future…we just don’t know what God will have us to plant yet.

In my next blog post, I discuss the differences between the Sabbath law for the Israelites and a weekly rest that God encourages us to take before we set our minds to the work ahead again. I examine what rest looks like in the New Covenant without the emphasis on exacting rules and punishments, but a rest that comes from within. A rest that comes from a desire to set a day apart as Holy. A rest that recognizes that Jesus can take our burdens and that He has important work for us to do that can’t wait! A rest that can only come from the grace of our sins being washed away. A rest that we can have in part in this life, that is a glimpse of the perfect rest with the Father in Heaven.

Will you pray with us that God will grant our request for a child in our 7th year?

More importantly, Will you join me in this pursuit of rest while we wait?