I woke up, realized I had nowhere to be and went right back to sleep. I usually can’t do this. I think about the emails I should be responding to, the deadline looming on the project, the laundry that needs to get done, and before I know it, relaxing sleep is no longer an option.

But the difference was that it was Shabbat.

Anyone will tell you that there is no sleep, no rest, no meal like that of Shabbat. And it makes perfect sense. When you have chosen not to answer your phone, turn on your computer, or get in your car, it is somewhat of a forced relaxation and therefore one that is easier to enjoy guilt-free.

Yet there is so much more. And only recently have I recognized the power of what it is I have experienced for so long. Shabbat is not just about rest. It is not just our time to focus on ourselves and on our families and enjoy quality time together. Those things are great. Even better than great.  But there is something else.

Shabbat is the day of the week when we allow ourselves to be parented, or more appropriately, mothered. After all, Shabbat is referred to in the feminine. It is Shabbat HaMalka, the Shabbat Queen, that resides with us for those precious 25 hours. Fortunately, there are many who were raised in loving and supportive homes, environments where they felt safe and secure and knew that their parents had their back. Yet all too many were not. All too many now have families of their own and don’t know what it means to give or receive unconditional love because they never had it. It is hard to let go and trust if you were raised needing to rely solely on yourself for your success and well-being. Yet that is what Shabbat is all about.

Once a week, for 25 hours, we stop creating, we stop inventing, we stop inserting ourselves into creation. We stop because it is our time to recognize, acknowledge and give thanks to the ultimate Creator. And when we stop, we allow ourselves to trust and to experience what it means to let Someone else take care of us.

Perhaps that is why the sleep feels so good, because we can hear the whisper in our soul telling us that it is OK, that everything is fine, that we have nothing we need to worry about. We eat the food that we had already prepared so we can relax and enjoy it, knowing, at least temporarily, that we will be satiated.

It is through allowing ourselves to be mothered that we learn to mother. If we can experience a sense of security and calm, we can provide for our families that same experience. If we can trust and let go when it comes to Shabbat, we can learn to trust and let go in other areas of our lives.

We begin this process by inviting Shabbat to enter through the lighting our flame. The flame that will always strive to reach higher and higher and that when the lights are out look the same as others even if the candles that hold them differ greatly. The flame is our soul and is what cannot be diminished regardless of what we have been through. Shabbat begins by igniting and illuminating that inner and essential part of ourselves that is covered over all week long and easily forgotten.

And when we light it, we transform reality.  We shift from the weekday to our day of holiness. We usher in Shabbat and allow it to happen. There is the custom that we light one flame for each member in our family. This means that for ourselves, we are one light. One absolutely necessary and foundational light. And during Shabbat our light is nurtured and cared for so that we have the strength and power that we will need to face the new week. The week when our flame is once again hidden within the mundane.

But we do not face it alone. We begin Shabbat by lighting that one candle with that one wick that represents our soul, but we end it by lighting two wicks that are intertwined together. There is our flame but we are not expected to get through life on our own, we are always connected to that other flame.

And perhaps this is our reminder that regardless of the homes we were born into and raised from, whether healthy or unhealthy, loving or the opposite, we always have and always will have Shabbat surrounding us and within us. We will always have that Mother who loves and cares for us. During Shabbat we experience Her in everything that surrounds us. But during the week we can experience Her by everything that is within us. We are truly never alone. We just need to be willing to see Who is holding our hand and intertwined with our wick just waiting to be lit.

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