In her book A Mother’s Rule of Life, Holly Pierlot offers practical suggestions for bringing order to life with small children. Rather than zeroing in on home organization or prayer life, Pierlot looks to the monastic Rule to consider all aspects of the human person: spiritual, yes, but also physical, interpersonal, etc.
Some of us are left scratching our heads at the alleged rapidity with which her life was turned around from utter chaos to quietly drinking 10 cups of coffee over various prayer books throughout the day. Additionally, the number of hours the Canadian family seems to spend inside in the winter is anxiety-inducing for anyone with small children who benefit from long stretches of fresh air. These questions aside, the book has many worthwhile ideas.
Among these, the concept some have called the “Mama Sabbath” is a helpful one. By no means limited to Sunday, the Mama Sabbath is a day for the mother to leave her children, restore herself, and return renewed. Pierlot describes wandering through bookstores and sitting on a bench by the water. These small idylls can go a long way to revivifying the weary mother. The reason why it works so well is the simplicity and clarity.
Instead of hanging around the house trying to relax, if the mother leaves, she is no longer assailed by whatever drives her up the wall: noise, clutter, the demands of daily life. Out in the wild, or just at the local coffee shop, these demands fade in the distance, allowing for perspective.
There’s nothing quite so ineffective as a mother trying to “take a break” in the middle of her teeming household. What is most likely to happen is that she will attempt to pass the baton to her husband or a babysitter, but, of course, the children will continue to plague her. The person trying to watch her children will be saddled with an impossible task, certain children may resort to antics that exasperate, and the mother is left in an uncomfortable, quasi-rest state of discontent.
Perhaps what everyone needs is a clean break. Only temporary, we hasten to add. In a society set on “normalizing” all deviant behavior and soothing failures with unwarranted praise, people have begun to revisit the mother who abandons her children. Our culture has begun to ask whether the mother who leaves her children is heroic or misunderstood, wrongly indicted in the court of public opinion. While it may be understandable that an individual mother in difficult circumstances chose to abandon her child, it remains a terrible dysfunction and grave injustice to the child.
A mother is supposed to be selfless and self-sacrificing, at times disappearing into the background of family life, the quiet rhythm-maker by which everyone else’s days are ordered. That is a rather tall order. While it is good and right for the mother to lose some of her individual identity and become the lifegiving, life-sustaining heart of the family, she remains an individual. To fail to recognize this essential, individual personality of each mother is a recipe for disaster. Like a many-faceted gemstone, she can be viewed from different vantage points.
So as not to lose the vantage point of individual, personal, sometimes independent adult, it is good for the mother to take a “Mama Sabbath,” venturing out on a brief trip or relaxing errand without children. There may be some for whom such a day or stretch of hours is not necessary. Those who might need a Mama Sabbath should try and experience Pierlot’s wisdom in making it a monthly event.
