Life has been chaotic for the last few weeks. My house flooding, massive remodeling, a nonexistent dating life, work projects that are always pressing and on my mind... but, by far, the biggest draw on my time has been preparing for Natural Products Expo East. It's one of the biggest natural health trade shows in the world, and I'm leaving tomorrow to represent my company.

We're a new exhibitor at Expo East, so that meant designing banners, writing literature, creating & filling & packaging & displaying samples, designing and building a booth, choosing clothes, designing new packaging for products, building a sales pitch, arranging for lodging and transportation...

I woke up this morning and my first thought was, "I need to make a simple online Google Form so that we can quickly take orders on an iPad."

Great thought. Usually we take orders on order forms, but since we have 70+ products in our line, my first attempts at creating an intuitive online form were cumbersome and much less elegant than the paper & pencil version. Later, I designed intro packages for stocking stores based on the most popular products that we sell so that people wouldn't go into choice shock (20 most popular, 30, 40)... and the new form I designed could be easily converted into an online option.

But it's Sunday.

A part of me rebelled slightly at that thought when it came. This is important. It won't take very long. I have time, and I have to do it. And it's not even really all that much work - computer work isn't physical labor or hoeing a field.

But another part of me turned inside and just asked, "You have two options. What do you choose? What do you really believe?"

It's a question that I've found my heart asking more and more recently. When I'm faced with a choice, it's not really about what I know... or about what has happened in the past. It's about what I choose. And that choice illuminates what I really believe. If I believe that I'll find greater meaning, goodness, and life happiness in working on the Sabbath when I don't need to, then I'll make the fillable form. If I believe that God will bless me greater for keeping the Sabbath holy than the blessings that would come otherwise, then I wait until tomorrow.

And that's why the Sabbath is such an amazing gift.

Not only is it an opportunity to put down the stress of the week, it is a commandment to do so. A commandment so important that it superseded almost any other thing in Israelite times.

In a time when life is complicated, and stress seems to be pulling me apart at the edges, I'm grateful for the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy, so that I can get some rest.

Now I need to figure out studying for my Mormon Tabernacle Choir test. That's the next thing trying to convince me of its Sabbath-day worthiness. I don't study on Sunday. But this is for a potential calling as a music missionary. *sigh* Maybe I'll just go home teaching instead.