Summer Sabbath Routine: How to Slow Down and Savor Summer

A weekly summer sabbath routine offers a refreshing way to recharge both mentally and physically during the warmer months.

If you are wanting to make the most of your summer by intentionally setting aside time for rest and reflection and creativity and connection, you CAN create or maintain a rejuvenating routine that supports long-term well-being and balance even in the midst of what is often a busy season.

I’ll share in this post tips for maintaining (or creating) a weekly sabbath routine during the summer, why putting in the effort to observe a summer sabbath routine is beneficial, and suggestions for how you might individualize your own sabbath practice.

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The Power of the Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine

Our family has been practicing a weekly Saturday sabbath for several years now. While it is always a something we must intentionally do, something about summer requires us to put a little more effort into protecting and preserving our weekly sabbath.

However, as of writing this post, we approach the end of our summer here in New Zealand, and I am so thankful that we put in that effort over this summer.

Our family really looks forward to Saturday (the day we typically observe as our weekly sabbath). And it grounds and connects us in a beautiful way. Especially in the midst of our most extroverted season, we have come to value and appreciate this weekly habit of rest and relationship.

Your weekly summer sabbath routine may look a little different than what our family typically does or enjoys, but that is one of the beauties of sabbath: it can be personalized to the individual or household.

The core focus of a weekly sabbath is to focus on rest, connection, and simple, slow intentionality. And regardless of your unique circumstance, I am confident that you will be rejuvenated by setting aside a day each week to protect and pursue such a focus.

The Foundation of a Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine: Why It’s Important

We have found a weekly summer sabbath routine practice beneficial for our family for three key reasons:

1. Rest and Recharging: Adequate rest (and sleep) is critical to our long-term well-being. Summer is often a little busier for us than other seasons since there are a variety of additional social opportunities or projects to tackle during the long daylight hours.
   
   It is so tempting to be extra busy in summer! And in our family, if we do not actually protect time to rest and recharge, we will find ourselves filling every day of the week with good but not restful activities.
   
   
2. Slowing Down: A weekly summer sabbath routine practice has also provided our family with time each week to slow down and disconnect from many aspects of day to day life.
   
   We try to “unplug” (literally and figuratively) from tasks that feel like toil. (Toil is defined as “long, strenuous, fatiguing work or laborious effort.”)
   
   Sabbath is about intentionally slowing down and disconnecting from the rush of life, which opens up space to nurture relationships. For our family, this looks like intentionally setting down, turning off, or disconnecting from tech tools that tend to keep half our attention focused on the larger world.
   
   
3. Family Connection: Learning how to rest together and pulling ourselves out of daily stresses and toil has opened up the third key benefit for our family, which is creating space for intentional family connection.
   
   A weekly summer sabbath practice has helped our family stay connected and cultivated being present with each other, in a season and culture where there are often many distractions

Tips for Creating Your Own Weekly Summer Sabbath Practice

After regularly observing a sabbath rest each week for several years, and being very intentional about maintaining our weekly sabbath during the summer months recently, these are my tips to help you develop or maintain your own weekly summer sabbath:

Tip 1: Set Boundaries

There is no fun way of saying this, but here’s the truth: if you are going to practice a weekly sabbath, you will need to say “no” to some things. We have found setting boundaries in advance makes it easier to maintain our sabbath practice. Specifically:

• Time boundaries: We have found specifying a 24 hour time period that will be our family’s sabbath has been helpful for my husband and I to stay on the same page. We like to block off from dinner time Friday to dinner time Saturday as our sabbath time period.
  
  This allows us to utilize Sunday for larger relational connection (for us, attending church) and getting a jump start to the week on Sunday afternoon. And since our work week runs through Friday afternoon, it means we have a time of rest to look forward to IMMEDIATELY after we finish work for the week.
  
  
• Activity boundaries: We find certain tasks are not helpful for rest, rejuvenation, disengaging from toil, and family connection. Those are tasks that we save for the other 6 days of the week, and protect against on our sabbath.
  
  For us, things like answering emails or messages, scrolling social media, working on challenging aspects of technology, or regularly engaging in activities where our family is doing a “divide and conquer” routine is unhelpful.

Tip 2: Choose Simplicity

In a world with an overabundance of decisions needing to be made, one of the things that has been most helpful for me to develop and maintain a weekly summer sabbath routine is to simplify some of the decision making.

• Simplify meals: I like to make something we all enjoy for dinner Friday night, and include a sweet treat at the end. A couple squares of chocolate from a chocolate bar works great!
  
  We have the same breakfast (Sheet Pan Swedish Pancakes) each week. We usually start the day out around the campfire in our driveway with buttered toast. Lunch is usually just a mid afternoon snack since breakfast becomes more of a late brunch.
  
  And dinner is always something from the freezer that requires minimal effort to pull off.
  
  
• Simplify the schedule: I give myself permission to not worry about seeing and responding to ANY text message during the whole 24 hour time period, so if I turn off my phone and miss an invitation to go do something spontaneous, it’s OK.
  
  We usually try to spend some time outside doing a physical activity together as a family at some point (a walk, bike ride, hike, etc). And we maintain a normal nap schedule for the little ones.
  
  In general, we plan to spend the majority if our Sabbath at home so we aren’t needing to pack up stuff.

Tip 3: Design your Ideal Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine

Putting intentional thought into what makes YOU feel rejuvenated is super helpful for developing and maintaining a weekly summer sabbath routine.

What do you love most about summer? Whatever it is, you can incorporate some aspect of that into your weekly summer sabbath routine. Then you will be intrinsically motivated to protect, preserve and consistently practice your sabbath.

• If you love picnics, you could plan to have your Friday night dinner as a picnic to launch your Sabbath.
• If you enjoy gardening, you could put your morning coffee into a travel mug and get outside into the garden first thing in the morning to soak up the morning sun, listen to the birds, and enjoy gardening before the day gets hot.
• Or if your favorite part of summer is lounging in a hammock, you could set up a hammock and take a book to read for an hour after breakfast.
• And if summer just doesn’t feel like summer without spending time in or near water, you could plan to wrap up your sabbath each week with a dip in the ocean, lake, river, or pool near you.

Take some time to identify your favorite things about summer, and (if applicable) talk to your family to map out a detailed ideal sabbath plan together. You don’t have to be slaves to the plan, but it is helpful if everyone knows what this time COULD look like and how it could be something everyone looks forward to.

Tip 4: Be ready to adapt

Our family USUALLY protects Saturday as our Sabbath day, but of course, sometimes you just can’t avoid having something scheduled for a Saturday. Some things are worth adapting your schedule to accommodate!

Since we’ve been doing this for awhile and we are all convinced living with a weekly sabbath is the best thing, we try to follow the 80/20 rule in this area and keep our sabbath days and activities consistent 80% of the time, with freedom to flex a bit on the other 20%.

Sometimes we have an extra kid or two around during our sabbath which naturally means a bit of flexing to incorporate another personality into our family’s relationships.

We had a getaway during the summer and got home on Friday, which meant we didn’t feel unpacked and ready to rest on Saturday that week, so we decided to postpone our sabbath that week to start at dinner time Saturday and go until dinner time Sunday.

If your work schedule changes and isn’t consistent week to week, you may need to look at your work schedule and choose a day each week (even if it isn’t the SAME day each week) to reserve to sabbath. Perhaps that will be Saturday one week, Friday the next week, and Monday the week after that.

As a word of caution, though: I do think it is hard to establish a consistent practice of sabbath if you are always adapting it (you need to develop “normal” to then be able to know what adapting looks like!).

So my encouragement would be to try to make an effort to plan and execute a consistent weekly sabbath for 3-4 weeks in a row, and then you can start to make some adaptations as needed.

Embracing the Slow Life: Less Tech, More Presence

Our family has chosen to intentionally stay away from most screens during our sabbath time. Our normal family habits don’t actually include a lot of screen time for our kids, but my husband and I both utilize screens as tools to get a lot of our productivity efforts done.

As a result, we make an extra effort to keep our laptop closed down and stay off our phones as much as possible during our weekly summer sabbath.

Because it has been a blessing to us, I strongly encourage you to consider how you can make your weekly summer sabbath routine have less tech than your normal, day-to-day life.

Images of parents looking at their device while their kids are wanting to connect with them haunt me a little (like this one!). I don’t want my kids to feel like a phone or computer is more important to me than them. And frankly, I want them to put down their phone or computer to engage and connect with me in 15 years!

More is caught than taught, they say, and my husband and I want to be intentional about modeling to our kids NOW (during these formative years of their lives) that real, in-the-flesh connection and relationships are worth prioritizing!

So here are some ideas to maximize your ability to connect as a family during your sabbath:

Slow Life Sabbaths Tip 1: Establish low-tech sabbaths

If at all possible (at least every few weeks), power down the computers, phones, tablets, and any other screens at the start of your Sabbath. Plan to keep them off for the duration of your sabbath.

(You can put a sticky note on screens visible to the home with a reminder that it is turned off until the designated end-of-sabbath time, and you can put things that are more mobile inside a drawer or in a box on the top shelf of the closet).

If you are like our family, even with our relatively low-tech lifestyle, this will not be easy! You’ll realize just how often you reach for your device!

But if you can get over that initial hurdle, it is SO freeing to feel completely unplugged from these everyday forms of technology.

Slow Life Sabbaths Tip 2: Engage in simple, tech-free activities

Our families enjoys a variety of screen-free activities, including:

• Card games and board games (if you need ideas, check out my “Fav’s” page for specific games we enjoy)
• Readaloud books and audiobooks (some ideas are also on my Fav’s Page)
• Playing with open ended toys like Magnatiles and Duplo
• Coloring (yes, we do this together as a family!)
• Scavenger hunts
• Walks – often with balls to chase, jump ropes, bikes, or hula hoops for the kids
• Swimming – during the summer, the ocean, the river that goes through our neighbor’s land, or the local pool
• Watching the sunset or watching stars come out – surprisingly fun with kids who are pumped about watching the “Nature Show!”

Slow Life Sabbaths Tip 3: Practice being present

If you are anything like me, this can be difficult to do… But I’m getting better! From personal experience, the things that are helping me practice being present are:

• Rejecting multi-tasking! On Sabbath, when I drink my coffee, I try to JUST drink my coffee. When I’m feeding my baby, I try to JUST feed my baby. When I’m sitting at the campfire or going on a walk with the kids, I try to JUST do that thing.
  
  Of course, sometimes you just have to do two things at once! But I make a conscious effort to minimize it on sabbath.
  
  
• Engaging with my senses: When I feel like I’m starting to get distracted, I focus on:
  • one thing to look at (a flower, or my child’s face)
  • something to smell (the cup of chai, or my baby’s head)
  • one thing to feel (the weight of the child in my lap, their little hand squeezing mine, the heat of the coffee cup), and so on.
    
    
• Reminding myself that this moment is where I want to be. Of course, sometimes I have things I’d like to go work on or projects to tackle… But for the sake of being present, for the sake of slowing down, giving myself time for feelings and thoughts to emerge, for the sake of soaking up THIS moment with my kids or my husband or just with the nature and beauty around me, this is the moment where I want to fully, 100% be.

What to Include in Your Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine

Are you getting convinced yet that life is really 1000% better with a weekly summer sabbath routine? I hope so!

As you contemplate what to include in your weekly summer sabbath routine, these specific ideas are worth considering:

Unstructured “together” time:

One of our family’s favorite things to do is to be together in the same space, but pursuing our own, individual pursuits. (If you are curious, yes, I think the majority of our family members register on the “introverted” side of the spectrum!)

I encourage you to make part of your weekly summer sabbath routine include unstructured time to give space for people to follow their own interests.

We often spend the first 2 hours of our weekly summer sabbath day outside near the campfire with a plate full of buttered toast. My husband and I sip our coffee and talk, and the kids migrate in and out, drawing with chalk, climbing in the hedge to look for bird’s nests, and riding bikes. We’re together, but everyone is free to pursue their interests. It a very grounding, fun, precious time!

Creative play:

Another common sabbath day pastime in our home is pulling out colored pencils and coloring books or plain paper. Our kids especially enjoy it when we sit down together as a family to do arts and crafts.

We also regularly walk a certain section of our road together as a family, and on our kids beg us to do “imaginative play” where we all pretend we are characters in whatever our most recent readaloud story is. With input from the kids, we develop some scenario of a spin off from the story (we were recently a family of beavers under the Witch’s frozen rule in Narnia taking news of the rumor of Aslan’s movement to friends in a different part of Narnia) and then immerse ourselves in pretend, imaginary play.

Whatever kind of creative play you enjoy, your weekly summer sabbath is a great time to engage in it and the rejuvenating of your soul that creative play allows!

(And if you’re interested in more info on the importance of play, I recently read a fascinating book: Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul)

Nature:

Of course, since it is summer, which usually means nice weather, I highly recommend you get yourself outside and soak up some nature during your weekly summer sabbath routine!

Eat breakfast outside, go for a walk, plant or pick some beautiful flowers, have a picnic lunch, sit around a campfire, or relax in the sun and read a book while you soak up some vitamin D.

Being out in nature is so good for us! Nature grounds us, helps reduce our stress levels, helps heal our bodies, and helps us actually enjoy sensations of pleasure more.

Whatever you opt for, being out in nature is a fantastic way to allocate some of your weekly summer sabbath time.

Challenges of a Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine and How to Overcome Them

Of course, as you likely know, a weekly day of rest and rejuvenation sound fabulous, but there are many persistent challenges that pop up! So lets talk about some of the most common challenges:

Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine Challenge #1: Busy schedules

We live in a busy world, and our schedules are often jam-packed with events we’ve already committed to doing. Not everyone can fully disconnect every week.

So some ideas that might be worth considering:

• Consider an abbreviated sabbath: Look carefully at your schedule and identify when you have the largest pocket of time during the week that you could have time to unplug. Maybe it isn’t a full 24 hours, but do you have an unscheduled Saturday morning or Friday evening? Even a few hours of sabbath can be rejuvenating!
• Consider a gradual approach to integrating sabbath: Maybe you’ll need to slowly adjust your schedule and commitments to where you have a free 24 hours. Could you start with 2 hours on Saturday morning, and then the next week try making it 3 hours, and then 4 hours?
• Consider blocking off your calendar in advance: Perhaps you already have some ongoing commitments, but can you work toward not adding any MORE commitments to your calendar on your chosen sabbath day?

Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine Challenge #2: Temptation to stay busy

I know that it is hard, in today’s world to default into constantly being productive. I have found it difficult to set aside my productivity for a slow, relaxed, unplugged day at times.

Here are some things I’ve found helpful:

• Create a Sabbath “could do” list. There are certain activities that I COULD do on sabbath for a short time that will be restful for me.
  
  Creating digital photo books or cleaning our sliding glass doors while listening to an audiobook with the family CAN be restful.
  
  The projects I look forward to doing, or the projects I enjoy doing but never seem to get around to because I have more urgent things to do, those can be great options for a sabbath “could do” list. Especially if you rest better with your hands a little busy.
  
  
• Set intentional goals for your sabbath: I think one of the best ways for me to embrace slowing down is when I set things that I value as my intention for my sabbath.
  
  So, things like “Have an unhurried conversation with my husband,” “Eat breakfast outside,” “Bake a batch of cookies with my girls,” or “Read 1 chapter of my book” are all intentions I can pursue for sabbath.
  
  Sometimes, just reframing your view and focusing on what you are PURSUING rather than focusing on what you are AVOIDING provides the intentionality you need to be okay with letting productivity go.
  
  
• Create little pockets of doing “nothing” without feeling guilty. I think learning to truly rest and be present is a muscle we have to exercise. Sometimes I set a timer for 5 minutes to just sit in the sun and soak up the summer moment.
  
  Doing that regularly has helped me grow in my capacity to be at rest more.

Weekly Summer Sabbath Routine Challenge #3: Family dynamics

For those of you with children, navigating the sabbath day with different energy levels can be tricky.

My husband and I have found it helpful to cater our sabbath day slightly toward our children. This doesn’t mean we do everything they want to do, but it also means that we don’t necessarily do everything we want to do either!

While my husband and I would love to sleep in, our kids don’t really understand the appeal of that yet. So we usually don’t sleep in. But we do try to engage in something that the adults like (sitting around a campfire drinking coffee) even if it is early in the morning.

And the bonus of that is that our kids get what they want (buttered toast by the campfire) and are quite happy to play independently near us, but without needing constant attention from us (which is also what we want!).

We do our kids’ favorite breakfast for our sabbath brunch (which also happens to be one of our favorite breakfasts!), so that is another win-win.

And if we plan an activity that one or all of the kids isn’t excited about (sometimes one or two of the kids aren’t pumped about a walk), we try to either pack a snack they’ll enjoy so they have something to look forward to, or play a card game or color or do another activity they DO want to do for a chunk of time before or after the walk.

Considering and including the kids in the plans for sabbath can help make a weekly summer sabbath something the kids all look forward to, which helps the momentum of the whole family!

Please Share: Tell Me About Your Summer Sabbath Routine Journey!

I hope you are encouraged and inspired to start or intentionally maintain your own weekly sabbath journey throughout the summer, regardless of how imperfect it may seem at first or some weeks! I truly believe even small steps in this area will benefit you and make a difference.

Everyone’s sabbath practice will look a little different, but I am convinced that the principles of rest, presence, and connection can be adapted to any life stage or circumstance. It may take a bit of creativity and tenacity, but it will be worth it.

Are you ready to commit to making a weekly summer sabbath happen this year? I so, so hope you at least give it a go for a few weeks. And if you do, come back and share about it in the comments below or tag me on social media. I’d love to hear about your experience!