Shabbat...shalom still in the works

I've heard it said that people new to the Messianic way of life have a slight hang-up. After realizing so many things we have been taught as biblical are simply tradition, we are very wary of new traditions. Even if they are really old traditions that are new to us. I personally have this problem :0)

But I love the Shabbat traditions! I love the idea that out of God's gift of rest came a tradition of a weekly meal with family, honoring both God and family. In such a crazy, chaotic world we have here in the USA, I hear moms all over wanting or planning family nights. Here is one that was set in motion on the 7th day of the beginning of time.

But we haven't done much. We both want to, I get excited about it, I can see something different in My Favorite's eyes when we talk about it. Yet, we haven't even set aside Friday night, Erev Shabbat, very often.

The last 3 weeks or so that has been different.

We now have a kitchen table we can eat at. That helped a lot.

I have a real white table cloth for our Shabbat meal. It might be wrinkled, but I don't care!

When we have challah, I have a nicer cuttingboard to put it on and my mom gave me a white cover she had around that I can cover it with. It isn't a offical cover, and it took some beating already by me, but it actually means a lot seeing that she isn't even a believer.

We use our nice blue dishes that are not plastic.

We don't have candle sticks, and didn't have candles, but I substituted with blue tea cups turned over and put tea lights on top. My Favorite mentioned he likes our candle sticks. That makes a wife smile. We had to use a blow torch to light them the first night because we couldn't find matches (found in Passover cleaning). That also makes a wife smile.

We came across the champaign glasses my SIL gave us for our wedding during Passover cleaning too. They had been given to her by someone else and she passed them along to us. They aren't really our style, but they are very nice and I hesitated to get rid of them, as I do most things. Last week I realized they would be a fun addition to our Shabbat table.

We eat vegitarian meals at home. My Favorite had a great idea to get fish for Shabbat meal, to make it an even more special night. He even found a new local place to get fresh fish. Our frantically thrown together meal of halibut steaks was delicious last week.

My Favorite mentioned something fun to add to our table in the future when we have more kids. Our silverware came with 12 place settings, including 12 individual salt and pepper shakers and 12 name place holders. We have never know what to do with it, but he had a great idea. How fun will those be to kids to set out?! Now, hopefully our immediate family won't ever use all 12...

It is fun. I look forward to it, and watching our family traditions grow and change. Now I need to work on not stressing out right before my Favorite comes home. It is not nice to start shabbat with a weeping, angry, frazzled wife. That is not a nice gift to give him for working so hard all week. But we have a nice table setting! You have to start somewhere.

Erev Shabbat Shalom.