Author: Jessie Caffey

This last week of my sabbatical was reserved for our family vacation to Durango, CO. We hiked, did summer activities at Purgatory Resort, shopped and spent time with each other. It was awesome and totally worth the 12 hour drive to get there.

My 7 year old daughter, Kirsley, did the zip line with me. My 7 year old son, Wyatt, kicked my tail at rock wall climbing. And my 3 year old daughter, Talan, was on my back for most of our hikes (literally). Hopefully these are memories that they will have for the rest of their lives.

Have you ever had a whole week to your self with nothing to do? Me either. Well until this past week that is. My game plan for week 3 was to do my spring cleaning, but I ended up doing that in week 2. We are traveling to Colorado for week 4, so what is there to do in week 3? NOTHING. At first I was nervous because I don’t do well with nothing to do. But I survived. I went to the gym a lot, I did some window shopping, I caught up on my favorite YouTube channel. That’s about it. I’m calling this The Week of Nothing. And it was awesome.

Week 2 of my sabbatical was spent volunteering at CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). I put together some training binders and did miscellaneous office work throughout the week, nothing too exciting. When putting together the training binders, I made copies on their copy machine. This machine was crazy slow, so while waiting for copies to finish I had some time to read. They had this book in the volunteer office that was compilation of testimonials from people who were at one point in the foster system and whose lives were blessed by their CASA. These stories were very powerful. These kids lives were changed by having one constant in their ever changing environment. As a parent, it made me realize that my kids have it so good. They have lots of constants and love in their little lives. It also made me realize that even though I mess up, my kids still have a consistent and safe home and they can count on me to always love them. Therefore, I must be doing something right.

For those of you who don’t know what CASA is about, check out their website.  https://bigcountrycasa.org/

As many of you may know, I’m painting the exterior of my house during my sabbatical. Monday morning I woke up and just started working on the daunting task. I purposefully chose not to play music or anything because I wanted to hear myself think. Do you know what my inner self was saying ALL day on Monday? “There is NO WAY you can paint this whole house by yourself!”  Maybe I should have prefaced this blog post by mentioning how independent and stubborn I am. It is very difficult for me to ask for help with anything. Fast forward to Thursday, I woke up and almost starting crying because I felt so overwhelmed by the huge amount of work I still had to do. Truly, I had not even put a dent in the task by the time Thursday came and I was already so tired. This stress and anxiety was not how I pictured my sabbatical. So I swallowed my pride and called my father in-law for help. And guess what? He has a SPRAY GUN! My excitement toward getting the job done has instantly returned. I also have a friend coming to help me Tuesday and Thursday next week. If only I had called for help when I started the project rather than a week into it, I could have avoided that feeling of being so overwhelmed. It may seem silly, but at almost 30 years old, I’m just now learning that asking for help isn’t such a bad thing.

This first week has been a week of silence and self reflection for me.