Shabbat Shalom

It’s the end of the week. It’s Shabbat, that weekly Jewish holiday, lasting from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a time to drop our work and take time to appreciate the world in its wholeness. That’s where the word “shalom” comes from. It means peace, but it also means wholeness.

I love Friday night. It’s so important to me to have it go well, to have a real sit-down dinner with all of the family. I like to make the meal, including challah, the braided bread. But it’s always a push to do it. I have to leave work a couple of hours early, race home on my bicycle, dump the bread ingredients into a bowl and mix them, then knead the bread and set it to rise. Then I can start thinking about dinner. While I’m cooking I’m generally unloading the dishwasher and setting the table. It’s sort of a hectic situation. Then after all that activity, we get to sit down, and say blessings over the lighting of the candles and over the wine and bread and then have a wonderful meal with friends and family.

With my illness, or rather, the treatment for my illness, I’ve had to give that up making the meal. During chemo I would sometimes make the challah if I felt up to it, and I would ask for help in kneading it. And oftentimes when I felt too awful, there would be no freshly backed challah for Shabbat, at least not the home made kind.
I’ve been cooking a lot lately now that I’m done with chemo, but mostly one pot meals in the pressure cooker. I haven’t been able to do the elaborate Friday Shabbat dinner. However, I can contribute now even if I can’t do the whole thing. It’s so nice to get to the point that I can set the table, help clean the kitchen so that the cook doesn’t have to clean up before cooking. I can be a support person. It’s a complicated meal that needs a support person (or two). I’m learning to appreciate what I can do instead of lamenting what I can’t do. I’m no longer superwoman, but I can at least be helpful.

There’s a lot I need help with these days. I’m learning how to ask for help. I’m learning how to share the load. I left work last Tuesday and realized that I had exceeded my energy. I rolled my bicycle on the Max (light rail train) because I was too exhausted to lift it onto a bus rack and then I called Howard to pick me up at the station since it seemed impossible to ride the mile and a half home uphill. He thanked me for asking him even though it caused him some inconvenience. Today I had to go to Salem for a work related event and my friend Johanna was kind enough to drive me there and back and wait around for a couple of hours while I kept my appointment.

I’m still marveling at how fragile I am, how limited my energy is. I know that I’ve been through a lot, but I want to be better NOW. When friends ask Howard how I am, he says he tells them that I’m impatient. It’s true. I’m trying to learn a little patience though. I’ve never been good at being patient or being a patient. But I’m beginning to understand why patients are called that. Recovery from a major illness is a very long road and it takes being patient.

So now it’s time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the world, enjoy the fruits of our labor, the beauty of nature, and renew our relationship with God or with Spirit or whatever it is that is greater than our tiny human perspective. Wonderful smells are wafting up from the kitchen right now. Andrine is making a wonderful dinner, challah and all. But I set the table.